


Tinderbox

by Cara_Loup



Series: Transitions [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, M/M, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:36:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 70,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3064646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cara_Loup/pseuds/Cara_Loup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle of Endor, things fall apart. Coruscant is taken, but when Luke is exposed as Vader’s son, a ruthless tribunal and Han demand the one thing Luke can’t give anymore: true feeling.<br/>T<span class="small">RANSITIONS</span> 5: Across the gaps and unexpected twists in the known story, this series explores the changes in Han and Luke’s lives from their first encounter to the battle of Endor — and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tinderbox

ENDOR

He stood by the pyre, close enough to feel the heat singe his hair. Each flicker of flame an emotion. Torn from its broken shell, its lost cause, escaping into light.

In the flight of sparks, he could examine each, crystallized in the moment of conflagration, before it burned up and slipped away. He felt the drain ― the release ― as _angerhategriefgodstoomuchlove_ and all passion fled with the smoke. Liberated.

 _Don’t feel. Separate_.

From brutal shocks of pain that razed consciousness to primal instinct. From the screams that borrowed his own voice.

From the storm of emotion that twisted every final secret out of him, tainted mingled charred beyond recognition.

From the marauding presence on the margin of his senses, gorged on the falter and flare of resistance.

From the demon matrix burned into flesh and genes, from pointless grief over inevitable loss.

From loss of purpose, transformation.

 _Separate_.  
 _Don’t feel_.  
 _Don’t feel_.

Welcome emptiness entered him, cool and reassuring. Settled into the dry patterns of memory, a technical knowledge of the way those feelings had once operated inside him. Molds that would pass for substance.

Hollowed, he moved lightly when he squatted to run his fingers across feathery ashflakes.

Nothing left. Only pieces of the shell that’d outlasted a transient victory. Only ashes that marked the moment of release.

Ironical, when as much could be said of him.

Nothing left but the mold set for him. Not destiny, yet direction.

 _Not me_ ―  
Jedi.  
He could return now.

 

* * * **1** * * *

_Don’t save me_  
 _Don’t lose me_  
 _Don’t wake me now_  
 _You let me_  
 _You release me_  
 _Let me drown_...

A hum and crackle of wind laced through the trees. When Han craned his neck, he could see patches of black nightsky. No fireworks now, except for the dull gleam of smoldering debris that circled Endor in a drunken orbit. A listless sparkle went up each time another piece of wreckage frictioned against the moon’s upper atmosphere.

Eight days. Eight days since he’d been yanked back to life, and now the Empire was spinning rapidly down the drain of history. The Emperor dead, Vader dead, a big part of the fleet gone to blazing hell in the Death Star’s explosion. All those facts still hovered on the fringe of his mind, waiting to sink in.

He rubbed his hands in the play of firelight, the close, localized heat that faltered mere steps away. Incredible. Now that all the bouncing and bopping had slackened, he could hear the trees rustle, surrounding the beats of a single wooden drum. An odd crispness to every sound.

And here he was, alive and uninjured, wearing his new rank like a chance accessory at a fancy dress-up. The clean scent of pine trees rising to his head with each breath.

Victory had caught around him in a daze, with a vast, swampy feeling of relief that made him want to embrace the world ― including droids and Ewoks. But that passing craze was fast leaking out of him, like fuel from a punctured slug tank. And though the shots and drugs they’d given him to snuff the dregs of hibernation sickness worked well enough, that image gave a pretty good description of his battered state.

Pieces broken out of his life, and the jagged edges still showed no intent of matching in a way that made sense.

Han reached for the wooden cup on the log beside him, and let the sharp, calming scent of brandale invade his nostrils. He held it there, not drinking, while his fingers locked and unlocked around the cup. The blue core of the fire painted bright phantoms across his retina, a heated updraft scouring nocturnal chills. Raking hot and cold along his spine.

Eight days, he’d spent most of his energies just taking it all in. Floundering for a foothold, while he processed the countless marks of change and missing time like scrambled codes. But the military situation had captured him in a grid of tactical necessities, and within that framework, he could take charge, do what had to be done. No point trying to think past the zero hour.

Right. And with all his confidence banked on that ticket, he’d gone shambling through Endor’s forests like a stray Gamorrean playing scout. Not quite the dead fetch of a competent leader, much as he’d tried to convince himself otherwise.

He flashed a glance out across the flames, the mottled blur of pelts and flightsuits falling into shadows that stood out with unnatural accuracy between the trees. From a throng of Rebel ground troopers, Leia wove towards him. But where was ―

“Hey.” She settled down beside him with one of those unfamiliar, lenient smiles. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine,” he answered mechanically. “Have you seen Luke? I thought he was with you.”

“I saw him with Chewie only a few minutes ago.” Leia switched to a firm tone of reassurance. “Don’t worry.”

One way or another, they were all keeping watch over Luke tonight.

“Right.” Han parked his cup between his boots. Unrest wound its way through him with threads of firelight and a noxious buzz that owed nothing to the brandale.

General Solo. Mission accomplished. Dues paid with interest. And Leia kept her hand on his arm as if to provide grounding in an unstable circuit.

 _No loose ends_ , Han told himself. _Except one_. And if he kept plucking at it, everything else might yet come unraveled.

Leia’s head sagged against his shoulder. Heat from the bonfires had crept into her cheeks and cast a soft haze across her expression. Calm and oddly removed, a look that didn’t click with Han’s various memories. Like she’d moved into a different headspace while he served thin time amusing Jabba’s court.

But Luke —

Linear thinking scrambled at that point, as it had for days. Vanished down a white hole that turned time and distance inside out. Luke, flushed with victory and elation, in his bright red flightsuit. A shaky smile, blue eyes alight with feeling as they parted on Hoth. Luke in unremitting, elegant black, a ghost of relief haunting his mouth. Luke, drawing closer all the time, and drifting away from him at the same speed — a dull ache pulled tight in Han’s chest.

He glanced down at his boots and guessed he should talk to Leia first, observe the order of tact, if nothing else. Except that he couldn’t pinpoint any order, any clean progression in this godsbedamned muddle. Or any excuse for blowing the hang of achievement sky high.

 _He’s all right_.

A plain-text message he’d run through his head so many times, it echoed with false comfort. But Luke had returned without so much as a scratch or bruise, relieved and walking on air, like the rest of them. And if Luke went off staring into shadowed spaces, it wasn’t by far the oddest kind of behavior Han had witnessed in his own time. Considering the circumstances, walking around dazed and driftless was a downright normal reaction.

And that was just it, wasn’t it? A strange sobriety hanging over Luke, too bland and deliberate, like defeating Vader and the Emperor was no big deal at all. The notion bared a hidden edge that fretted electric in Han’s nerves. He wanted to get up and pace, but instead wrapped an arm around Leia’s shoulders. Friendly gestures came easy by now. Words didn’t.

“You fallin’ asleep on me here?” He could do casual way better than this, but it served for a start.

“Mmmh.” Leia blew at a thin strand that had snaked free of her braid. “Yes, I’m tired... and I feel as if I could stay here forever and never move again.”

Han shifted his shoulders. _I should be so lucky_. But the leaden apprehension in his bones refused to budge, like he’d set entropy in motion again once he left this cozy spot.

“I could probably use some sleep.” Leia added. “How about you?” She rubbed her face against his shoulder and looked at him, close up, half flirting and half probing. “What do you think, should we retire?”

Han groped for answers a second too long. “I’m still kinda... keyed up, I guess. Why don’t you go ahead ‘n grab a rest while you can? We’ll all be busy as blazes come morning.”

Like he might’ve expected, that game plan didn’t go over big. Leia straightened, a sudden tightness around her mouth. “You’re so sensible tonight, flyboy.” The familiar prick of irony surfaced for a moment, then dropped from sight again. “We’re lodging in the same place as last night, but we’ll have it all to ourselves.”

She leaned forward, brushed his cheek with her lips, and swirled into motion before he had a chance to respond.

In the grip of serious discomfort, Han managed a lame, “See you later.”

“Don’t be too long.”

The look and the smile she flung him made them players in a covert game, balancing awkwardly along the lines of a half-finished script. Han returned a short nod and pushed to his feet.

Odd perhaps, but he’d come to rely on Leia during the hazy stretch of recovery. Drawing on her unguarded affection, once he’d grown used to it, to make sense of himself in a skewed reality. A safety bubble worn thin by suspended needs. Unanswered questions.

For a while, he ambled around the village like a remote-controlled seeker, all targeting programs shot to hell. The party mood had flagged somewhat, and between the blurry halos of the bonfires hung slabs of cold night air.

Han crossed another walkway that brought him up short on a circular platform. Some kind of sentry outpost, jutting above the tangled wilderness. Unrest and memory foraged in the woods, alive with suspicion. But the hazard wasn’t out there, it lodged deep in his gut, coiled like thin, cold wire. Only a couple hours ago, Luke had thrown his arms around him, and in the flash of one raw, defenseless look, something had nearly torn loose. And disappeared again as Luke backed away, toughened up and unreadable.

Han rocked back on his heels and the worn planks creaked querulously. A swift chill of adrenaline fanned out along his ribs, the portent of a risky maneuver. Next time he talked to Luke, he’d have to drop all the fake _buddy_ routines and come across clean.

Just what he owed, in too many ways. Ready to risk himself for a freakin’ Rebellion, but never like this. This was something he’d skirted in a complex pattern of evasions. Always trimming it down to something manageable, like that trite message over comlink when they’d shot out of Tatooine’s atmosphere.

 _I owe you one_.

Luke hadn’t replied to that, and the static that filtered back marked the limit of things that could be put into words. He’d have to do better this time. _Owe you_ just didn’t cut it anymore.

Han swung back, impatient at his own stalling. When he stalked through the village, he could feel the tension wind up and change with every step. _Just making sure Luke’s okay, right?_ he scoffed at himself. A whole lot more was riding on this, and the closer he got to the moment, the more essential it grew.

Chewbacca slouched in the fork of outflung limbs, the image of a resting predator, but his look fixed Han with tacit concern.

“Where is he?”

He didn’t have to specify. Chewie tilted his head, eyes narrowed, and gestured at a rope ladder that dangled from a wide trunk some yards away.

“Thanks,” Han said through his teeth.

The ladder’s lower end slapped against the tree as he hauled himself up, gripping impatiently at the coarse ropes. His nerves jangled, the puzzle pieces grating together in the gap between past and present. Time he started assembling them into some kind of order.

The quiet thickened when he pulled himself up on a rough platform, propped between the sway of branches without a railing or a view worth the mention. Luke was a shadow against the massive trunk, blending himself to the shadow-blurred darkness.

“Han,” he said, without much emphasis.

“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” Not the brightest thing to start a conversation with, and the tension in Luke’s poise didn’t resemble startlement either.

“That’s okay,” Luke answered unaccountably.

The dimness adjusted itself into drifting shades of gray, shot through with a faint scatter of starlight. Han took the time for a long breath. More than the hurried climb had left his heart pounding. “Luke, I...”

He trailed off, too much pressing to the fore all at once, washed up in a riot of sentiments. Feelings he’d tried to ignore for the longest time, then blocked out with raised defenses. But the carbon freeze had stripped down each flare shield in turn, and took out his reasons for maintaining them in the process.

Unease rumbled in his throat as he tried to clear it. “I want us to make a new start.”

The sound of those words slammed him headlong into a memory that laced a fine heat through his chest and left his throat dry. Luke’s mouth against his own, responding with more than hunger.

“We’ll all have to make a new start from here.”

Luke’s guarded reply had the ring of deliberate misunderstanding. Then again, Han couldn’t precisely trust himself to read Luke’s reactions right. Hoth had happened more than six months ago, though for him it was a mere fortnight. In all ways that mattered, they were living in different time zones.

“That’s not what I meant.” He took a step forward, wishing to hell he could explain what exactly it meant. Between them, the pause stretched into grating discomfort.

“That offer’s no longer available,” Luke said finally, his voice lowered, and for the first time his glance slipped aside.

So he’d made the right connections after all, and his cool tone stood out sharp as frost. Han shook his head, apprehensions building towards critical mass. “You think _that’s_ why I’m here?” He stopped at the snap in his voice and tried again, reaching into the troubled core of recollection. “There was a whole lot more to it’n that, and I... I wasn’t ready for it then, but things’ve changed, Luke.” Another breath, then, “I’m ready now.”

After all this time, it’d still taken a blow-up in the sky to shake him loose ― those brilliant, lethal fireworks when the Death Star exploded overhead. When everything inside him cramped up breathless, rebellious, lost. _No, goddamnit. Can’t be. Luke got away, he’s alive_. His own life on the line, about to drain away. The feel of it lingered long after Leia had reassured him, but every crucial choice in his life had burst on him like that. Made on a knife’s edge that bit deep.

All around them, branches rubbed together in the wind, and their constant whispers filtered through a brand new conviction of failure. Han knew his answer before it came, in a jolt of awful clarity that tasted of adrenaline.

“I can’t, Han. And you... you belong with Leia. I think you know that too.”

The wind stopped in the trees, and the sudden silence fractured with denial. All Han could do for the moment was ride it out. “Not much that I know for sure, kid. Except this.”

The husky sound of his voice exposed a snarl of feelings ― disjointed, but still coming clear. He moved in closer, refusing to take Luke’s answer for the truth.

Until he could see the complete stillness in Luke’s face, like winter. Sculptured to perfection against the dark silver of his hair, and perfectly shuttered. Coldness contained in the space between them.

All of it holding back the hurt that had to be there, Han told himself, a borderline kind of balance he might unsettle at a touch. But he couldn’t overstep the line Luke had just drawn, not after all the chances he’d passed up, parading out of memory to take digs at him.

“Too late, huh?”

“I’m sorry.” For a moment he thought he could see something stir in Luke’s expression, but it was gone in a flash, and he looked calm, a little bruised and tired, but nothing else.

“All right,” Han made himself say, in the voice of a robot, “just let me know if you need anything, okay? I’ll be there.”

“I’m not fragile.” Luke’s tone was edged with impatience, a brush-off as clear as it got. “But thanks.”

He had nothing to say to that. With a clipped nod, Han took himself from view. Starting the climb down through a wilderness of migrant shadows that played havoc with his sense of balance.

 _So this is it_. No chance, no conclusion, just a sheer drop of disbelief. Short-lived focus gone to pieces again, plummeting into numbness that closed around him with thick, isolating layers. He moved on autopilot through the retiring village. The flighty heat of the bonfires had ebbed off, and drowsy groups huddled around them, trading murmurs across the embers.

He just kept walking, right up to the hut where they’d spent the last night, camping at close quarters with Chewie and the droids. Where Leia was expecting him.

 _Yeah, walk right in and screw up twice in one night_. But between that prospect and giving ground to additional waiting games, there was just enough room to set his jaw and think of Leia’s expression by the carbon pit.

A thin gray wedge crawled across the floor and lit on a heap of mats and furs piled up for bedding. The rich fan of Leia’s hair almost black in the dimness and her breathing barely audible, slow with abandon.

Darkness resumed as the leather flap swung back into place. Cajoled him with an illusion of suspended time. For long moments, Han stood by the door wrangling with the fact that he couldn’t wake Leia now, while fatigue dragged up through his legs. He pried himself from inertia with an effort.

When he pulled off his boots and dropped his vest and shirt on the ground beside them, he moved like a sloppy intruder half hoping to get caught. Leia’s breathing patterns altered as he stretched out beside her. But then the comfort of her body warmth wrapped around him, and the dark overran him with abrupt, leaden tiredness. Han closed his eyes with no choice but surrender.

 

He was awake again just as suddenly. Only a single thread of twilight inched through the flap drawn across the door. Edged the graceful line of Leia’s slim hand, like a disconnected silver object.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said close by his ear, in an unfamiliar throaty voice.

Her hands were on his body, stroking gentle sweeps across his chest. The heavy fall of her hair brushed his throat, his face, closing velvet around him when she placed a kiss against his mouth and another. In the silence, the soft sounds of skin on skin stood out sharply, each lonely and remote. Sensations isolating themselves.

He pushed both hands under the cascades of Leia’s hair, invading where a slight dampness had gathered at her nape, in search for common grounds. Shifting her closer, into the kind of intimacy they’d never shared before. Her skin incredibly soft and her heartbeat a quick flutter through the cloth of her shirt. He closed his eyes to focus on that.

Sensations skimmed the surface of his mind and scurried off into shadows. In the depth of his body stirred nothing but impartial, relaxed warmth that felt just as alien, while his hands moved in slow, apologetic circles across Leia’s back. A miserable attempt to soothe that registered in moments.

She stiffened, angling away from his touch. “You must be exhausted.” Readjusting furs and blankets with a brisk tug, she slid down beside him. “You’ve been through so much lately, and the doctors warned me...”

“About what?” The words scraped in his parched throat.

“That hibernation sickness could have all kinds of unexpected effects. Pushing yourself can’t have helped.”

And perhaps she was right, no matter what his instincts claimed. Sleep clung to his mind like a sticky fog, and he couldn’t think straight through it.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

She kissed his forehead, and her hand curved just below his hairline, alerting the memory of a Cloud City holding cell. Same gestures, different life. The blankets settled over him, a soft weight without warmth.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Leia whispered. “Everything will be okay.”

* * *

The morning was blurry. Diffuse, humid brightness rolled in with scents he didn’t recognize, shades of green, gold and brown undulating beyond the doorway. A trackless alarm hovered in his nerves. Han swallowed dryly, knuckled his eyes, and the last night rushed his mind in a murky flood.

“Time you came around, soldier,” Leia’s voice said from his other side. “We’ve been wondering if you’d sleep all day.”

Han got his elbows under him and levered up, darting another wary glance at the bright rectangle that suggested mid-morning. Last night’s convolutions crowded his head, and he wasn’t in any shape to disentangle them just yet. Besides, victory didn’t mean they could plunge headlong into vacation mode. “Everything okay?”

Cocking his head, he took in the medley of sounds from outside. Ewoks chattering at their usual rapid pace, the stomp of hurried footfalls on wood, a distant engine tunneling for greater altitude.

“Everything’s fine,” Leia answered. “Most everybody else has already shuttled back up to the fleet, and our ground teams are busy securing the area. For all we know, there might still be Imperials hiding out in the woods.”

“You could’ve woken me up.” Faint resentment crept over him. Took just too damn long to shake the lingering haze in his senses.

When he turned his face, Leia’s brown eyes rested on him with fond exasperation. She’d changed back into her battle fatigues, her hair caught up in tidy, restraining braids. “You needed a rest pretty badly. Chewie thought so too.”

“The big meddling mother-hen,” Han grumbled and scooted a glance around to locate his clothes. “So what’s next? I s’pose we need to dispatch some rescue teams to―”

“That’s been taken care of,” Leia assured him, getting to her feet as he started to dress.

Seemed like there was little else he could do for the time being; make sure he looked the part of responsible general and prepare for the blast of a thousand urgent necessities.

“So what’s our schedule for the day?” He tucked his shirt into his rumpled trousers, not much liking the feel of those sweat-stained threads on his skin.

“I’m due at a Command Staff meeting in less than an hour.” Leia stepped to the open door and seemed to inspect some invisible movement out there. “General Rieekan will want to see you later, but not before you’ve been checked out in sickbay.”

“Sickbay?” Han shook his head. “Sounds like we’ve got more important matters to deal with right now.”

Leia turned to him, hands firm on her hips. “The doctors cleared you for active duty only on condition that you report back immediately after this mission,” she pointed out. “You _promised_ to submit to another medical, remember?”

“Seemed like the only way out at the time,” Han groused, casting a pointed glance at his scruffy array. “Besides, I need a shower.”

“They’ve got showers in sickbay.” Leia set a placating hand on his arm. “Come on, it won’t take that long.”

Her touch and the sudden pause outlasted the limits of pretense. No good trying to make out like nothing had happened. Han cleared his throat. “Leia... we gotta talk.”

For a moment she stilled completely, their eyes locked in a troubled, silent exchange. “Yes, I know. But we simply don’t have time right now.” A sweep of regret crossed her face. “It will have to wait.”

 

Half an hour later, Han marched down the corridor that traversed sickbay. Admiral Ackbar’s flagship was turning steady orbits around Endor, every level brimming with hectic activity ― except for this snow-white, sterile path to a pain-free afterlife. Last night, the place must’ve overflowed with emergencies, but now a throbbing quiet had settled in. Through the hush drifted the low purr of medical equipment, raising an instinctive bristle at the back of Han’s neck. He’d showered and changed in record time, but the more his head cleared, the less at ease he felt.

Between the loudness of his footfalls, emptiness stalked him. And the morning after shouldn’t feel like this ― damnit, he should be wrapped tight with contentment because they’d done the impossible. Instead of nursing woe like a jilted teenager.

Yeah well, who’d claimed that all those hang-ups generally sorted themselves out by daylight? He’d kept thoughts of Luke as far off as he could. And daylight measured the distance in mere inches.

 _He didn’t mean it_. Loss wrapped itself up in anger as Han snatched that thought back. Luke always knew what he wanted, that much hadn’t changed. Though for all his composure, Luke must have been pretty shook up last night. He needed time to level out, and sooner or later their friendship would ease out of this unnatural frost, too.

Han sneered at himself for that sorry attempt. He’d never done modesty well. Truth was, he’d wanted the whole thing, not some fuzzy, friendly scrap of Luke’s attention.

His mood dangling low, Han shouldered through lastoplex swing-doors. A nurse droid waved him to the side before he could enter the Chief Medical Officer’s den and chirped something about a few additional tests. Great. Freedom was a mere hop away, but they’d still make him work for it.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the nurse extracted several generous blood samples, hauled him through the tubular neural scanner and frisked his reflexes with the help of a miniature torture device that spilled small electric shocks into his nervous system. Han gritted his teeth and wasted a glare on her when she finally sent him on to the doc.

The CMO happened to be human, an immigrant who’d picked up Mon Cal habits, going by the pace of his speech and a tendency to wag his head from side to side. For several minutes, he pored over the test results, while Han swiveled a restless look around. Lit panels disguised all the bulkheads, each plastered with a plethora of raygrams and other medical snapshots that looked like abstract art.

He kept half his mind on those illegible patterns when the doc started grilling him about symptoms of disorientation, digestive disorders and dendritic defects. All part and parcel of hibernation sickness, apparently, and for some reason the guy was big on d-words but not much else.

“Patience,” the CMO repeated more than once, and went on to inquire about emotional stress factors with a schooled look of sympathy. “It can’t be easy for you to readjust and reintegrate your former self-image after this experience.”

 _Former self-image?_ Hell. Han shook his head and fixed his glance on the panel behind the doc. Just above his shoulder glowed an enlarged ‘gram of a hand, fingers splayed, like a reminder of all things plain and natural. Except that sculpted metal took the place of bones, and braided fibers crisscrossed the muscle tissue. A bionic prosthesis.

“You’re makin’ it sound like I’m halfway towards a personality split.” Han took his eyes off that shining evidence of advanced medical engineering. Had to be his own rattled state, but reality seemed set on mauling him with repeats of the same question today. _Who are you now?_ And whatever answers he could pull up had the ring of shoddy fabrications.

“I’m merely stating that you’ve been through an extremely traumatic experience,” the CMO said peacably. “There is counseling available, if you require it.”

“If I require it, I’ll let you know.” Han pinned on a cordial expression. “Thank you, doctor.”

“You’re welcome, General.”

He could tell the CMO would’ve preferred poking round the murkier spots in his mind and beat a quick retreat. No more tripwires from here to the Falcon. Out in the corridor, Han took his bearings from a blithe green icon that pointed to the nearest lift bank. And stopped short on the next corner.

Some fifteen meters down the passage, Luke was conversing with another medical droid who gave him directions with spindly fingers.

And what the frak was Luke doing here? While the droid scuttled off, Han shook himself from hesitation and kept right on course. _Just another day at Camp Mayhem. Everything normal_.

Luke cradled his right hand in a way he recognized, sheltered in the crook of his left arm. The black glove he’d worn all through their mission had come off, too.

But when his head rose, the vacant look on his face slammed it all home again. Rejection, savage disbelief, a quickening of loss that rocked the ground under Han’s feet.

He’d come close enough to try casual conversation, but he blanked on safely trivial topics, and his big mouth beat him to it. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

Luke seemed to turn a shade of pale, but then he gathered himself to perfect sobriety. “It’s... just superficial damage. They might have to replace a few wires, nothing more.”

 _Wires?_ Before Han could razz him for that grotesque joke, comprehension struck, and it wasn’t a joke at all. A cold, sick feeling whiplashed through the region of his stomach and threatened to make his head spin.

“I thought they’d told you,” Luke said.

Without warning, he flashed on the raygram ― bright pulsing red against the steel skeleton ― and his stomach clutched harder.

“No, they didn’t.” He bit off a moronic _I’m sorry_ that couldn’t span the gap stretching wide and deep like six months in the dark.

“I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.” Luke angled a short glance past him. His expression blocked every question, every impulse to fuss and make worried noises. “It’s okay, Han. But now I’d better head over to bionic engineering.”

“Right. Sure. I’m, uh, due to meet up with Rieekan.” For the time being, that awkward, strangled tone would have to pass as normal. “See you later.”

Han set himself in motion, a two-bit automaton on some piddling errand. From behind, Luke’s receding footsteps inserted off-beats between his own, each detonating a question.

A muddle of _who ― how ― where?_ twisted through his head and spilled over into, _How d’you live with it?_ But right behind that, frustration boiled up. _Why didn’t you tell me?_

Helpless anger backlashed instantly. Like anyone would be spoiling to share that type of news? _I’ve been maimed and crippled, how about you?_ Maybe last night ― if he’d given Luke a chance to talk, if he’d asked some circumspect questions instead of blurting out his own wants ― things would’ve been different, would be different now.

The white corridor telescoped into a pathway to nowhere. _White white white_ like the clenching space that’d leached six months from his life. And he’d known nothing would be the same after that, just hadn’t extended the same logic to everyone else and the universe at large.

 _I’m ready_. Like he’d had any clue what that meant, a brainless claim that must’ve burned Luke with caustic irony.

He stared at the glistening white curve of the lift doors. His own reflection like something behind a thick pane of ice. Overhead, a melodious signal chimed. _Here ends life as we know it_.

With some witless, sentimental part of his brain, he’d assumed that the carbon freeze had paid the ransom for them all. Like he’d been appointed the center of a universe based on poetic justice.

Though he’d done nothing but stare, the lift pinged and its doors swung wide to reveal Leia. She stopped inside the photoelectric barrier that kept the doors apart, expression going from composed to concerned. “Han? What did the doctor say?”

He gathered himself from the blur that garbled every linear thought, long enough to reply, “That I’m pretty healthy for a stubborn bastard.”

His harsh tone recoiled in the look she gave him. Tight-lipped, Leia asked, “What else?”

Suddenly, the white, empty hallway with its clattering echoes unnerved him. Han stepped forward into the lift cabin, the door sealing itself with a hiss, but neither of them reached for the controls.

Ridiculous, how much it took to get the words out. “Could’ve told me about Luke. About... his hand.”

Just above the control panel, a random pattern of thin scratches scarred the plastene surface.

“I suppose we all assumed that Luke would tell you,” Leia said haltingly at his back. “How did you find out?”

“I ran into him. On his way to bionic engineering. To get the wiring fixed.” Pointless outrage punctured his reply. “Happened on Bespin, right? Vader did this to him.”

“Yes.” Leia’s voice was so low and crushed, it stung him with instant alarm.

When he turned, her posture had control written all over it ― arms crossed, eyes fixed straight ahead ― a picture of mute defensiveness. “What is it?”

The flash of annoyance would’ve been hard to miss. “Command wants to question Luke,” she answered. “They’ve decided to call for a formal inquiry at once. He’ll be notified shortly.”

 _Oh, for all_ ― “Formal inquiry?” Han echoed, temper rallying to home in on a clear target. “What for?”

“I find it entirely unnecessary myself. At the very least, they could have waited for Luke to submit a report of his own.” Leia’s fingers drummed against her forearm. “But everyone else insisted that he should be questioned about his disappearance on Endor. And they have the right. Technically, he’s still a member of the military, even if he resigned from active status.”

That was news to Han too, but the trivia could wait until later. “What _about_ his disappearance? We all know where he went, and Command’d better be grateful!”

“They want the details,” Leia explained, her tone ripe with strain. “It seems they find it hard to believe that a single Jedi could defeat both Vader and the Emperor.”

“And you think they’ll suddenly see the light just ‘cause Luke tells ‘em that’s exactly how it went?” Han made a rude noise in his throat. “Better keep an eye on them, or they’ll ask him to demonstrate.”

“I’m not a member of the inquiry board,” she said stiffly. “My neutrality in this matter was drawn into question.”

“Your―?” Han threw up a hand. “What the hell’s goin’ on? Sounds more like they’re planning a blasted court-martial!”

Leia shook her head. “It’s inconsiderate and unpleasant, but it’s only a formality. I’m sure Luke will be able to explain his decision, but I do wish they’d spare him this ― this whole...”

“Inquisition?” Han suggested when she ran out of words. “Bein’ treated like ― like a suspect of some kind when they should invent a new type o’ decoration for him?”

“I doubt that everyone sees it this way, Han.” With a short, decisive move, Leia reached for the control panel and tapped a lit button. “Our team disabled the shield, and the fleet did the rest of the work. From a strictly military point of view, Luke’s intervention wasn’t necessary for our victory.”

“Oh, sure ― tell me another! How do we know what other tricks Vader and Palpatine could’ve pulled if their attention hadn’t been on Luke?”

“I know,” Leia said wearily. “I know.”

The lift hummed into motion and rode up at a fierce pace. Leia’s profile was a study in checked tension. Had to be something else that worried her, needling Han just like it had back on Endor, the night before the battle. And the same sense of betrayal thickened in his gut. Shut out, left in the dark...

For a moment, he wondered if he’d been sent to sickbay on purpose, so he couldn’t barge in on that sneaky Command Staff meeting. He swallowed roughly just as the lift jingled and coasted to a stop.

When they got off, Leia touched his hand, a swift, almost furtive gesture. “Come and see me in my quarters tonight. Then we can talk.”

* * *

The day passed in fits and starts. After a terse, thankfully unvarnished briefing, Rieekan sent a bunch of edgy generals out into debris-riddled space. While Madine’s flotilla of corvettes scoured crippled Imperial ships for survivors, Han and Lando drew the less heroic part of dealing with the lower end of the wreckage. If all that high-tech trash came raining down on Endor, the forest moon would go down in history as the first blighted zone of the new era.

Nothing much they could do about the radioactive fallout that’d already leaked from punctured nuclear cores, but at least they could chop the mangled ships to mere shrapnel and manipulate the direction those floating scraps took.

Han spent five hours cloistered in the gunnery turret, blasting away and trading curt messages with Lando in his borrowed blockade runner. Five hours of firing at unprotesting junk. At some point, he noticed that his fingers were close to cramping round the gunmount’s handgrips, but the rampant fury had evaporated into something dull and toxic.

When he finally returned to the cockpit, the punch and pull of the quad guns kept resonating in his backbone, and Chewie beside him was several laps into a serious brooding session. _And this_ , Han thought while the Mon Cal ships swung into view, _was the first day of our new lives_.

A large docking bay yawned around the Falcon some minutes later, gushing its homey lights all over the flight deck. Han was halfway down the ramp before a grouchy rumble arrested him mid-stride.

“Aw, come on!” He shot his Wookiee partner a short-tempered glance. “Lando c’n help you scare up a new sensor dish. It’s _his_ fault we’re missing one.”

Chewbacca returned a snarl for that. Plenty of rebuke, and little sympathy.

“Yeah, right, I got somethin’ more important to do,” Han growled back. “And it’s not like we’re in a real scramble to get her fixed.”

Looking at the rate of things falling apart, the Falcon, minus her sensor dish, stood out like a beacon of shiny perfection. With a wistful glance at her, Han took off.

 

The doors to Leia’s quarters weren’t locked. She sat by the desk console and swiveled her seat slowly. Drawing out the moment in a way that wasn’t like her at all.

Two steps into the room, Han felt the tension build like a low-pressure system. “How’d the inquiry go? Heard anything?”

She regarded him for a long moment, and that look didn’t bode happy news. Beside her hand atop the console rested a datacube, refracting smooth illumination into noxious glitters.

“I think you need to see this.” Leia straightened, and the cube clicked into place. “You’re not supposed to, of course―” But the viewer had already switched on, wavering through a sudden influx of visual data. “Here. Sit down.”

Adrenaline sparked off Han’s nerve endings as he dropped into the free chair. “How bad is it?”

Leia shook her head. Reason for serious alarm. In the past three-and-a-half years, she’d run out of answers only when something the size of a proton missile got under her guard.

Jumbled light steadied into a discolored image of Luke, his head and shoulders caught in the neutral frame. While the close focus captured him for future scrutiny, a question floated from the unseen rest of the room.

“Luke Skywalker, Commander, status: reserve.” A flat recital of formalities that fell short of brushing Luke’s real significance for the Rebellion.

“Start from the beginning,” said the soft, patient voice of Mon Mothma.

 _The beginning_. And just like that, failure grabbed Han, plunging through the gap of six months, and tagged him with personal responsibility.

“...through the Force,” Luke was saying, “I could sense Vader’s presence on Endor, and I concluded that he would be able to locate me just as easily. I realized that I’d endanger our mission if I stayed.”

Han shifted with a surge of uncomfortable memory. _That’s your imagination, kid_ , he heard himself, aiming for gruff reassurance and not quite pulling it off. Witlessly relieved that Luke had joined his team instead of pulling another fade ― like that was any guarantee he’d play it by the book. _Should’ve listened_...

“...when I understood that the Emperor was present,” Luke answered the question he’d just missed, “I guessed at their intentions. To turn me to the Dark Side and make me their servant.”

“How could you be sure that you would be able to resist?” asked a voice from outside the imager’s focus. Ackbar, unmistakable for the booming resonance.

“I could not be sure,” Luke answered.

Words like carved stones, dropping one by one into silence.

“I calculated that I would be able to buy time for our team on Endor. For the fleet.”

“And when the Death Star was destroyed, you were prepared to die there with Vader and the Emperor,” Mothma stated, her tone balanced on the edge of grief. “Is that not so?”

“I had no other choice.”

Like his survival didn’t matter at all? Luke’s neutral tone was starting to pluck the bottom out of Han’s stomach. That, and the bland look Luke wore, like tripled concussion shielding against sympathy.

“How long were you secluded with the two of them?” another voice chimed in. One Han didn’t recognize, though the harsh inflection indicted the Bothan section leader of Intell.

“That’s difficult to tell. It seemed... like a very long time, while they were probing ― testing my defenses.”

“They attempted to turn you into a servant of the Dark Side,” Ackbar threw in, a clear prompt.

“A somewhat esoteric notion for those of us who have no immediate grasp of the Force,” added the Bothan, spikes of sarcasm embedded in his tone.

“I refused to fight Vader,” Luke answered with that buttressed, unnatural patience. “They tried to make me give in to my anger by playing on my own helplessness...”

Han shifted in his seat to shake a crawl of cold apprehension while Luke said, “The Emperor told me he’d set a trap for our group on Endor.”

 _Hell_. Seemed like the damn bastard had charted all the right buttons he needed to push. To drive Luke over the edge. Han’s gut twisted fretfully under phantom pressure.

“But you resisted,” Mothma offered.

“For a while.”

A different silence sprang up, closed like a link in a chain, locking tight. All through it, Luke never twitched, kept his eyes straight on the invisible inquiry board and volunteered no clues.

“Will you please tell us what happened?” Mon Mothma asked eventually. There was a waver in her voice now ― anxiety or doubt ― and Luke’s eyes shifted vaguely towards her.

“I fought Vader and defeated him. I cut off his hand.”

 _Good_. A hot, thick feeling of satisfaction twined itself with the fury in Han’s gut, but it lasted only until Luke added, “He had a mechanical hand. Like mine.”

The chill ran deeper this time. Jarred loose by something in that statement ― something about the _match_ of it ― and beside him Leia stirred, a short, nervous rustle.

“Commander, please correct me if I misunderstood,” Ackbar started, each word bearing a ponderous weight. “You say you refused to be tempted into fighting. Does this mean―?”

“That I turned to the Dark Side? Yes. I turned. They succeeded. The Dark Side was part of me, and I was part of it while I fought Vader.” Luke’s chin rose fractionally, and a subtle change came with it, an invasion of cold knowledge that turned his face into chiseled, dazzling ice. Unreal.

 _He can’t be sittin’ there, sayin’ this_...

“And then I denied it,” Luke finished. “I disarmed myself.”

A quiet noise sounded in the background, very much like a sigh of relief, but Han felt none of it. The ghost touch of alarm ran over his skin.

“Please continue,” Mothma urged.

“The Emperor recognized the futility of his attempt,” Luke said. “He drew on the Force to... burn me. I screamed.”

Right there, his voice seemed to thicken briefly, catching on something that jibed at the back of Han’s mind, a clue of some kind that eluded him ―

― but this wasn’t Luke, wasn’t anything he remembered from Luke, not even when he’d gone into Jedi detachment mode out there in the sandstorm.

“I’d be dead if Vader hadn’t come to my aid,” Luke said. “He was badly injured, but he threw the Emperor down the reactor shaft.”

“ _Vader_ killed Palpatine?” The gasp of surprise in that voice made it impossible to identify. “But why?”

“He saved me because he loved me. He was my father.”

Han caught the muffled noises of shock and disbelief, and rational thinking took a short vacation to nowhere.

... _my father_ going off and off and off in his head, a reel through revelations that came full circle and, strangely, steadied him. A clear lead, at last.

While reality still spun on its axis, Leia gripped his wrist, and the truth redoubled itself, transmitting through the pressure of her cold fingers. _Twins_...

He looked at her and saw that she’d known, the shadowplay of guilt and resolve at the back of her glance.

“Leia...” He covered her hand with his own, gave it a squeeze for reassurance. And while his brain struggled to process what felt like a short-circuit, he missed some of the questioning back and forth. Luke was saying he’d known it since Bespin, his face set in stone.

“So, when you decided to surrender yourself to the Imperial troops, you were, in effect, joining your father.” Dodonna now, horning in for the first time.

A short huff in the background interfered with the implications, perhaps coming from Mon Mothma, but no disturbance showed on Luke’s face.

“I hoped that I could turn him back from the Dark Side,” he explained. “My father was a Jedi before he fell, and he liberated himself when he turned against Palpatine.”

Mutters rose in a murky wave above Luke’s voice, and for the first time he looked straight at the mechanical eye that’d faithfully cataloged everything. “Yes, I took a risk. I’d like to make it clear that the choice was mine, and mine alone.”

Glacial resolve, nothing more. _It’s not me, losing touch with reality_ , Han thought. _It’s him. Like he’s shut down completely_.

More followed, haphazard questions tossed out and glancing off, because Luke had already wrapped up his account. Han sagged back into his chair.

“He told me the night before he left,” Leia supplied as the image folded into abrupt black. “About Vader. And that we’re―”

“Yeah.” Han couldn’t blame her for keeping that bit of news locked away, but a sudden need to move took over, pushed him from the chair and drove him two short steps into healthy anger. He wheeled back around. “What’s _wrong_ with him?”

Too much, too obvious. Something in his mind tightened, shoved all the muddy issues to the back ― Vader, the Dark Side, Palpatine’s headgames ― and banged the door on them. Practical matters first.

Leia straightened in her seat, the white tension fading out into sharp alert. “I wish I could tell you.”

“If he’d _planned_ to make ‘em mistrust him, he couldn’t’ve done any better!” Han started to pace again. “It’s not what he said, it’s _how_.” He could see the ramifications like fissures spreading across the bulkhead.

“You realize what kinda case they can build against him?” Han ticked the points off on his fingers. “Luke’s got no shred of evidence to prove things went down like he said. Vader could’ve made him all kinds of promises on Bespin. Maybe Luke knew about the trap Palpatine set for us and came along to Endor only to bail out ‘n join his father... When the shield came down, he realized his plan wasn’t working and changed sides again.”

“In theory.” Leia’s face was taut with denied frustration. “You’re forgetting that everyone holds the Jedi in great respect.”

“Yeah, but Vader used to be one too, remember? That’s bound to shoot down a few pet convictions.” Han stared at the empty spot where the recording had shimmered, his mind clear with a lightheaded kind of fury. And from that sudden blank, plans sprouted at a feverish rate.

“You think they’re still in session?” he asked. “’Cause we gotta do something to control the damage, and fast. Best before the dust settles.”

“Yes, I’m sure they’re still reviewing reports.” Leia frowned, but her eyes unclouded. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

 

In the hallway outside the main conference room, droids and officers shuttled back and forth on courier errands, their footfalls beating time like clockwork. Han spent ten long minutes engaging in cordial small-talk with one of Mon Mothma’s aides, fielding salvos of curiosity and unbridled hero worship that made his teeth ache. But when he finally dropped some strategic hints, the young officer zoomed into immediate action. Five minutes later, Han had his date with the high and mighty.

When he entered, Mon Mothma issued a tired nod in his direction. “General Solo. It is very gracious of you to report. After everything you have been through lately, I imagine that you’re in need of a rest.”

“Like everyone else.” Han clasped his hands behind his back, balancing nonchalance with the military pose. “If you’re too busy right now, we can do this tomorrow.” No point in pushing too hard, or they’d start scenting a private agenda.

Mothma folded her hands above her datapad and summoned a smile as if in afterthought. “Not at all. Lieutenant Parjad tells me we have already kept you waiting for quite some time. Please, sit down.”

Han took the lone chair on the far side of the table ― exactly where Luke must’ve been seated ― and struck a pose of casual alertness.

“We would be curious,” Admiral Ackbar said, “to learn how you managed to obtain the support of Endor’s natives.”

Han extended the politic version of a grin. “Matter of fact, we met them by accident...”

From there, he launched into a detailed account of their chance alliance with the Ewok tribe, coloring their tactical ingenuity in rainbow shades of praise, until impatience twitched around the Bothan’s narrowed eyes and General Dodonna started tugging his beard with a glazed look.

“Our mission would’ve failed without the little furballs,” Han concluded emphatically. “And I’d hate to see their world take the brunt of the damage, after all they’ve done for us.”

“We’re in complete agreement, General,” Mon Mothma assured him. “A team of Mon Calamarian experts will look into the possibility of installing atmosphere generators to counter the nuclear fallout.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” Han eased back in the chair, deflating himself to signal that he’d dropped all his cards on the table. Like any honest man of duty, he began accounting for his team.

“No casualties among my group. Captain Aglon broke his ankle when he pursued an Imperial scout into the woods and is still being treated in sickbay. And I should mention that the night before our attack on the bunker, I gave Commander Skywalker leave to proceed on his own.” A cool staccato quickened in his blood, like the rush that came with a breakneck round of sabacc. And he’d pull the bluff just as easily. “Well, I suppose you’ve already heard that he took on Vader and the Emperor all by himself.”

“Commander Skywalker approached you with his plan?” Ackbar inquired.

“Sure. Gotta admit that I didn’t like the risk he was taking, but his reasoning made sense to me.” Han gestured expansively. “I found out firsthand on Bespin just how much Vader wanted to get his hands on Luke. Under the circumstances, a fake surrender looked like our best chance to draw Vader’s attention off our mission.”

On the other side of the table, the members of the board traded surreptitious glances.

Han sat forward and embellished his obliging front with concern. “If you think I made the wrong decision―”

“No, General, it’s not that,” Mothma stopped him.

“We’re merely puzzled.” Ackbar lingered over the last word, his large head cocked to one side. “Commander Skywalker did not mention his conversation with you.”

“Then he’s already been debriefed? Whoa, wait―” Han interrupted himself to let a frown form between his brows. “Can’t imagine he forgot.”

“He stated explicitly that he informed no one before leaving his post,” the Bothan said coolly.

“But―” Han broke off again and mustered exasperation with a glance up at the ceiling. “Right. Well, that’s just like him.”

“What is?” Mon Mothma prompted crisply.

“Luke’s always had a way of assuming responsibility, ‘specially when things get rough,” Han elaborated, and there the snow job slewed back towards the margins of truth. “I’d just bet that’s what happened. He wouldn’t have wanted to hang the blame on anyone else, if his plan didn’t work out.” He pulled a face for effect. “It’s that self-sacrificing streak in him.”

“Indeed.” Dodonna stirred from his slumped daze. “I remember an incident while we were evacuating Yavin Four―”

“A most noble gesture indeed,” Mothma cut in.

“All the same, Skywalker must have realized that his actions could be misconstrued as premeditated defection,” the Bothan grouched.

Han conceded that point with a shrug and projected discomfort without any trouble. But he’d capped his sell, and the Bothan’s disgruntlement totaled nothing worse than rearguard action.

He’d just opened his mouth to pour it on some more when rapid knocks on the door broke the quiet like gunfire. A moment later, Lieutenant Parjad stormed in.

“I’m sorry to interrupt...” He ground to a halt, flushed and zipped up enough to fire a turbine.

“What is it, Officer?” Ackbar’s head turned ponderously, a golden eye fixing on the young man.

“We’ve just received and decrypted a message from our agents on Coruscant. The remaining Imperial fleet―” Parjad paused to snatch a breath. “Such as it is, after the bulk regrouped here,” he started again. “They’re withdrawing, and revolts have broken out in the confined districts.”

“They’re leaving Coruscant undefended?” Dodonna’s expression lost every hint of drowsiness in a heartbeat.

“Coruscant’s defenses always relied on the regime of terror more than heavy military presence,” the Bothan threw in. “They must realize that their position has become untenable.”

“This calls for immediate action!”

Dodonna climbed to his feet, but Mon Mothma rose just as swiftly. “We must review the situation carefully before we decide on a course of action. Thank you, Lieutenant. General Solo...”

The board’s escalated attention swiveled back to him, and Han straightened his spine.

“We thank you for your report and your invaluable services to the Alliance,” Mothma said in fluent, formal tones, but her eyes probed Han with shrewd speculation. “Your loyalty commends you, and we shall gratefully rely on it. We’ve won a crucial battle, but not the war. Our ultimate victory will depend on the commitment of conscientious leaders like yourself.”

And with the slightest curving of her lips, she offered him a covert bargain. She’d swallow his version of events, provided he made good on it with continued service. It tightened a nerve at the top of Han’s spine.

“Count on me,” he returned with a curt bow of the head. _Conscientious leader, right_. 

And that was it. Dismissed. The next step carved out clear before him, now that he’d gotten the show on the road. A compact sense of achievement mingled with misgivings as he strode from the conference room.

 

Much like he’d expected, Luke’s quarters rebuffed him with locked doors and thrumming silence. Han wandered back to the lifts to try the more likely option. _Stalling again?_ he sneered at himself.

On the hangar level, illumination had been cut back to energy-saving mode, which left the docking bay half-lit and Luke’s X-wing a pale outline. Except that it wasn’t his original machine anymore, not the one he’d taken against the Death Star and to Bespin.

Twitters from Artoo ghosted across and confirmed Han’s best guess. He’d recognize that droid’s sassy tones anywhere. Shadows strained across the deck, extending into oily twilight. When he rounded the fighter parked next to Luke’s, blazing runlights whipped out towards him. Luke stood upright in his cockpit.

“Yes, Artoo,” he said patiently, “I’m sure we’ll find another in time.” And before he’d quite finished, he leaped down with a smooth, weightless grace that mocked the limits of human balance.

Han broke his pace, the sight jarring against his memory of a similar scene on Hoth. Luke in his pale snowsuit, astride his X-wing’s nose...

With delay, he noticed the duffel bag Luke had parked on the deck, apparently stuffed with personal riffraff from his fighter. Han disengaged from the shadows, announcing his presence with a forceful step. “Made up your mind to resign?”

Luke turned to him without hurry or surprise. “Yes. As a Jedi, I can’t be part of a military chain of command.”

 _Bit too late to figure that out_ , snapped through Han’s mind, and he scrapped it fast. “Look, I... Leia played me the recording of that ― that inquiry they put you through.”

“I see.” Toneless, the back-lit face sculpted from discipline and shadow.

Across a distance of two paces, Han watched for reaction while helpless regret fumbled up ― _can’t begin to guess what you’ve been through_ ― and surged into protest. The stillness in Luke was tribute, payment, some unholy kind of penance, and a shield Han wanted to take apart with his bare hands. _And then, what?_

“About Vader,” Han started, and didn’t much care for the gritty sound of his voice. “Just want you to know that it makes no difference to me.” _You could’ve told me, but hell_ ―

A curt shake of the head, as if he’d startled Luke out of wary expectation. “How can you say that?”

Han folded his arms. “You’re nothing like him.”

“I―” But whatever was trying to slip out, Luke snatched it back, his clouded eyes unreadable. “That’s... very generous.”

“Nope, that’s just natural,” Han retorted, and the slip into point-blank candor loosened him up enough to start explaining about the report he’d just delivered.

Luke listened with impartial interest. “I appreciate your concern,” he said finally, “but that wasn’t necessary.”

Like it didn’t matter if he set himself on a course for blue ruin and solitary confinement.

The notion prodded Han’s temper out of containment. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but you set yourself up for charges of defection and treason!” he flared. “Next time somebody asks, you’re not gonna make a liar out of me, you’ll stick with my version, got that?”

“And make a liar out of myself,” Luke concluded calmly.

“Better that than defendant in a court-martial!” Han snapped. Aimless, unfocused anger burned through his muscles, scrambling for an outlet.

Damage control. What a concept.

He waved his own words aside and held a breath in his lungs until the worst of it had passed. “Luke, listen. You don’t have to do this for me. Do it for Leia. She’s worried.”

“I understand.” The concession came without effort, without change.

Heels dug in, Han kept watching, held that impassive look until Luke’s glance slipped aside, just for a moment, and that was all. A tacit signal to leave, but he didn’t, he waited until Luke moved to shoulder his duffel, and the runlights switched off.

Metallic darkness plunged back in, but the image had buried itself deep, luminous and cutting. Loss clung to it, growing on him as he walked with Luke to the bay’s portals. They parted in the corridor only a minute later.

 

Han took the shortest route to the Falcon. She sat in a mingled glare of white worklight and blue fusion torch, sparks scooting up in angry volleys. No replacement for the lost sensor dish yet, but Chewie had thrown himself into rewiring the mount. Han watched the trenchant glitters blossom and spray until dark specks zipped across his vision.

“So, what’s my job?” he called against the rasp of the torch that sputtered off at once.

Chewbacca pushed up his goggles and suggested what should’ve been obvious.

“Right.” Han didn’t bother to shout this time. “Got ya.”

A thread of minimal lighting trailed him to the maintenance pit. He grabbed the toolkit from storage and lowered himself into the jungle of pipes and power leads. Coolant fumes hung in the tight space, made acrid in the raised temperature of the pit.

Han slung his jacket out into the corridor and went to work. A feeling in his body that traced the shock of a collision just past, clogging from silence into fury. Spilling a haze across his sight.

His calibrator skidded off a clamp and struck the back of his hand, the fine tip shearing off a layer of skin so fast that he felt no pain. Out of habit more than anything else, Han cursed and sucked at the cut.

A thick drop of blood beaded slowly between his knuckles. Bright pulsing red, then running slick down his fingers. For a moment, he stared at it with total incomprehension.

Slight scrapes on the deck plates alerted him to a silent presence above the pit. When he looked up, Chewie studied him, towering vigilant and mournful in the semi-darkness.

“It’s nothing,” Han said. “Just a scratch.”

But something twisted and bubbled in his chest, something that could come out as hysterical laughter, or worse. He wiped his hand on his pants, blinked against the sting of noxious fumes in his eyes. _‘Least I’m still bleeding_.

“I ain’t doin’ any good here,” he said roughly. “Guess I’d better cash it in.”

* * * * *

Like white spin-drift, the strange radiance of hyperspace slid past the porthole. Alone in his cabin, Luke flattened his hand against the clearsteel and touched the vibrations of a powerful drive. It could be felt everywhere aboard the large cruiser, along with the slow rise of agitation.

Two days from Endor, three more before they’d reach the Core, and Coruscant. A cipher that could mean anything, from another trap to triumph, to the darkest trench of war.

No one knew exactly what to expect. The reports were garbled, and Intell couldn’t verify if they’d passed through clean channels only.

Within the nebulous hyperlights, Luke could see the ghost of his mirror image. By renouncing his formal rank, he’d excluded himself from confidential staff meetings. A security measure he’d anticipated.

To honor the truth meant to disclaim the distant reflections of the hero he’d once dreamed to be. A relief of sorts. But he had to yield space for the disquiet to settle, the throbs of shock, fear and instant shame he’d felt from everyone in the conference room. And Leia dropped by at regular intervals to keep him informed. Sometime soon, she’d told him this morning, they’d hear from the scouts traveling ahead of the fleet.

He hadn’t asked her why she’d decided to show Han the recording, and she never brought it up either, not a word of what he’d told the board. Their kinship had become a charged secret that now threatened Leia alone.

But when she shared her memories of Imperial Center, of Senate debates under Palpatine’s control, an unspoken question lingered in her voice. _Once Coruscant is safe, what will you do?_

It should have been obvious. There’d be traces of the Jedi on Coruscant. Records, if not survivors; leads, if not answers. All the future he could claim lay encapsulated in Yoda’s parting words ― _pass on what you have learned_ ― but to do that duty justice, he needed knowledge. More, the clarity of unfiltered Force pouring through him that eluded him since Endor. As if the weight taken off him had bled him dry. Perhaps it was merely a matter of lacking focus.

When Leia came to visit, her tension filled the room like static, tinged with unhappiness, but he couldn’t ask her about Han, if Han was the cause.

 _It will pass_.

Luke turned his hand, dragging his knuckles across the porthole where the light danced. Remote, and unrestricted.

* * *

With a swipe at his matted hair, Han stepped back from the circuitry bay. “Yep, got it,” he answered a rumble from the starboard hold. “Ready to go back online.”

Still no legit substitute for the dish, but the backup system they’d rigged would serve for the time being. Han crossed for the engineering console where a garland of indicator lights winked on in confirmation. None too soon, either. From tomorrow morning, he’d likely be caught up in one strategy meeting after the next.

At his back, Chewbacca shuffled through the corridor, already stalking down the next spot in need of pampering. Determined to let the Falcon shine, once she sailed from the cruiser’s belly under her own power.

“I’ll be in my cabin,” Han threw over his shoulder, with a cursory glance at the chrono. He would’ve preferred to fly the old lady all the way to Coruscant, instead of keeping her trapped inside the larger ship. Another compromise.

Han scratched the ball of his thumb across his stubbled jaw as he entered his quarters. Leia and he mostly went for dinner in the senior officers’ mess, where a minimal dress code applied. So it was change, shave, think of nothing. Still wrestling with a shirt sleeve, he scooped the old vibro-shaver from one of the lockers. The thready rasp of it hummed against his cheekbone, filling time with the languid drone of routine.

When he clicked it off again, a subtle change in the silence spun him around. Leia stood in the open door, dressed in one of the sensible outfits she always wore these days.

“I’m early,” she said without much of an inflection.

“No problem.” Han smoothed the fresh shirt down over his stomach. “Could’ve used a shower, but that’ll have to wait ‘til later.”

“We’re on for a briefing at nineteen hundred,” Leia returned, but her eyes swept across his unmade bunk, the messy tangle of sheets. Just for a second. That she’d never questioned his decision to camp aboard the Falcon didn’t mean she wasn’t wondering.

Han grabbed up his gunbelt. “That means there’s news from our scouts?”

“Yes. And from what I’ve heard, they confirm the reports we’ve received.”

The promise of some fast action eased Han past the moment’s discomfort. “Still gonna be a tough nut to crack.”

He’d spent hours poring over maps of Coruscant, testing recovered brain capacity with a flurry of scenarios. Controls of the planetary shield were located deep in the Palace, policed by Palpatine’s elite guard. A suicidal troupe drilled to live by a single rule: mayhem before surrender. But bullet-proof surveillance systems were a thing of fantasy, and the data they’d plucked from a busted Star Destroyer had yielded some interesting clues.

“If we can organize the right kinda sabotage from orbit, we’ll catch ‘em bending,” Han added. “’Course, that means we gotta establish secure contact with the local resistance.”

“Intell is working on it.” Leia pushed her hands into her tunic’s pockets and leaned against the doorway. “What kind of sabotage?”

“The shield’s powered by half a dozen generators, and not all of ‘em in the Palace precinct. If power supply can be disrupted in two places, only for a few minutes, it’s gonna open a hole big enough to fly half our fleet through before the backup systems kick in. After that, we’ll be fighting them from within.” Han tossed the shaver back into the locker and flashed her a crooked grin. “It can be done, wait ‘n see.”

“I see you’ve been busy making plans, General.” Leia’s cheerful tone rang false. A crack in the mutual pretense that exposed all the ragged seams, patched together too often to take much strain.

“Part of my job.” Han steered her out into the corridor. Least he could do was make like he hadn’t noticed. “They’re not gonna include Luke in any of the briefings, are they?”

“Not for the time being.” Leia stopped in the lounge, clearly unwilling to take this discussion beyond the limits of privacy. “It’s a matter of military protocol, but it serves to buy everyone time to... readjust. Luke’s disclosure came as a shock, and I do understand why.”

“Funny, ‘cause I don’t!” Han gestured sharply. “Vader’s _dead_ , and it’s not like he had a major influence on Luke anyway. Luke’s still the same...” The sudden loudness of his voice bounced off the bulkhead, brusque and off-key. _Just who’re you tryin’ to convince here?_

“I’m sure Command will accept that, given some more time.” Leia’s conviction carried a distinct edge. “Once our situation has grown more stable, we’ll elect a Council, and Luke will be nominated. As he should be.”

“You think so?” On Han’s personal scale, that assessment rated as a trifle too optimistic. But politics were Leia’s field of expertise, and the real question slipped his guard in the wake of that notion. “How is he?”

“Unchanged.” Hesitation dragged at her reply. “He says he spends several hours each day in meditation. I suppose it’s just... what he needs right now.” Leia forced a wry smile. “You know, he’s far more sensible about therapeutic recreation than you are.”

“Me?” Han played along with a passable tone of indignation. “I’m fine. Matter of fact, I’ve stopped takin’ those pills they keep shoving at me. Don’t need ‘em any longer.”

“Then, if you’re feeling better―” The faint color in Leia’s cheeks betrayed private speculation, and she averted her face a second too late.

“Good as new,” Han grumbled, close to flustered himself. But it didn’t look like they’d make it to the mess anytime soon, so he prowled over to the drink dispenser and slapped a random button.

Memory pounced anyway, stealing over him with the scents of pine and burnt wood, wind rattling the trees in powerless anger. Their last night on Endor had launched this sordid charade, and the longer it went on, the more pointless it grew. Except that it worked as a safeguard of some kind.

“’Sides,” he added, “I need to get back in shape for the job on Coruscant.”

“Of course.” Soft and pensive, Leia’s tone hinted a question that wasn’t long in coming. “You’re determined to go through with it, aren’t you? To be honest, I’d wondered if you’d resign from active duty at the end of our mission.”

A plastic cup rattled from the dispenser, steaming with the dark, bitter scent of kaffin. Ignoring it, Han leaned back against the machine, arms folded. “What, sweetheart, you thought I’d run off with the glory ‘n leave the dirty work to others? Flattering.”

He’d put his best effort into a cocky drawl, and it wasn’t working. Worse, something he’d said drained the color from Leia’s face ― and then he realized he’d called her _sweetheart_ , like old times, when sparring and scoring kept the game in full swing. One word, toppling the whole elaborate facade.

Leia took a short step to the game table, her fingers trailing across the checkered surface. When she turned back, she’d seized composure like battle armor. “It’s not going to happen, is it? This... You and me.”

“Look, this ain’t a good time for any of us,” Han started, and the miserable truth came out trite as a borrowed excuse.

“Please!” Impatience unlocked some of Leia’s temper. “I don’t blame you. But let’s stop pretending that everything will work itself out, because I don’t think it will.”

Han released all the make-believe with a breath. “Guess it won’t.” Uncrossing his arms, he opened his defenses. “What d’you want me to say?”

 _I love you_ , he recalled incongruously. Plucked from the warmth and relief of the moment, the words fell flat. More than he’d ever admitted, but not enough.

“Let me tell you what I think, for a start...” Propped against the table, Leia sent a searching look across the deck. “I think you like me much more than you used to. Maybe that’s why―” She shook her head. “But you never meant to take it this far, did you?”

A hot flush tightened Han’s chest. Worse, he’d played blind to the upshot. Running from something he couldn’t control, he’d raised the stakes in a game that’d seemed predictable. One move, twice wrong. All his fault.

“Never thought you’d fall in love with me.” Han cleared his throat. “And I didn’t realize until―”

“I know.” Leia knotted her fingers together, braced for impact.

“If the carbon freeze hadn’t happened...” He threw up a hand, damning Ifs and Maybes. “But when I came out of it again, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.”

“You needed someone. I was there.” Her linked fingers formed a narrow cage. “In a way, I anticipated that when we planned the rescue. I could tell you hadn’t made up your mind, and I suppose I...” Her honesty had grown jagged when their eyes met again, across a greater distance. “I hoped I could tip the balance in my favor,” Leia finished.

“Don’t say that!” He ran into silence there, protest missing its vanishing target.

“But the answer’s simply that you never fell in love with me,” she said unerringly. “I should have seen that much sooner.”

The change in her struck Han with a pang. Something fragile to the sharper curves of her cheekbones, a defenseless candor in her expression that reminded him of Luke, revealing their kinship at the worst of times.

Two long steps took him across, hands cupping her shoulders with awkward tenderness. Hell of a time, to be swamped with warmth and affection for her. “I wasn’t playin’ games with you, Leia. Not then. I just needed... time to catch up. Still do, I guess, or I wouldn’t be acting like a cold-blooded bastard.”

“It’s my fault as much as yours.” For a moment, she relaxed her shoulders, accepting the gesture with distinct reserve. “You’ve given me time to think about it,” she said softly, “and I’ve realized that I wanted this to be... everything I’d never expected. A solution, a reason for change. Maybe I’ve been holding on for all the wrong reasons. Against my better judgement.”

When she stepped back, Han let his hands drop to his sides. “You don’t have to make it easy for me.”

“No, I mean it. We should try to be friends. Maybe we’ll do better in that department.” Balanced away from impossible closeness, Leia took his hand and linked their fingers. A simple gesture with an altered meaning, sealing a private pact. “What do you think?”

“I don’t deserve you.” His throat had gone tight with the hurt that darkened her eyes. That cut through her short, brittle laugh.

“About time you realized. But I’d better go now,” Leia said firmly. “Don’t forget the briefing.”

“I won’t,” Han muttered ― while regret, relief and a chafing heat much like shame chased each other’s tail in frantic succession.

Until Leia turned back in the doorway. “About Luke. Don’t give up on him. He needs friends more than ever.”

Instant protest made Han bristle. “You think I’d drop him just ‘cause he’s blown a couple illusions?”

“No, but you must wonder why he didn’t trust you with the truth.” A small frown appeared between Leia’s brows, and she averted her face. “I don’t suppose he ever told you about his original plans for a rescue from Jabba’s palace.” Her eyes swept back to Han, targeting him. “He was going to die for you, if necessary.”

The blow landed hard, though Leia couldn’t have guessed, a sear of desperation that fired up his spine.

“I’ll remember that,” Han said without much of a voice.

Her steps retreated down the corridor when he walked back to the dispenser, tossed the cooled kaffin into the recycler and punched for another which he drank down so hot it burned his mouth and throat. Didn’t wash out the taste of betrayal, of course ― doubled now, and spiced with resentment that flared when he took a sober look at himself.

Entrenched in self-pity, flailing to turn his life into a goddamn farce. And what the hell did he know about Luke’s feelings anyway? About those six months in isolation, alone and exposed to the corrosion of truths like nightmares, likely hanging on by a mere thread. And in spite of all that, Luke had engineered the rescue ―

 _All for me_. Just like Ord Mantell, like Bespin. He should’ve known that Luke would move heaven and earth to come after him. All that passion in him, too much faith and blind loyalty ―

Gone now, gone and drowned in one final blaze of sacrifice, smothered in some kind of inner freeze.

 _How d’you know?_ Han paced across to the couch and circled back through a sharp turn. _How hard’ve you tried?_ Aboard a ship the size of a floating fortress, avoiding someone came all too easy. And so long as he didn’t see Luke, he could keep lying to himself, keep the worst of it blocked from sight.

He stopped again in front of the drink dispenser, the pale green display going unfocused while he let memory come and rush him with the feel of Luke’s pulse under his fingers, the wild brilliance of a smile.

Too much to handle at the time, and perhaps too much now, but his defenses were out of commission and the need too essential to leave him a choice.

Loneliness refracted back and forth through a moment like glass, until it shattered with the bang of his fist against the display.

 _Nothing’s final yet_ , Han told himself. Soon as he got a chance, he’d start working on it from that premise. He braced his arm across the metal casing and leaned his head against it. Restless tensions hummed where his muscles connected to bone.

 _Just don’t_... Too late to catch it back now, too late to change a thing. _Don’t leave me_.

 

* * * **2** * * *

_Deep as you go I’ll follow_  
 _Deep as the water goes_  
 _All the world is hollow and dry_  
 _But you and I go down_...

 

CORUSCANT

Han knuckled his gritty eyes. On the screen before him, a blue grid started swimming, dissolved into random intersections of lines and angles. _Count your blessings_ , he told himself, and slapped the datapad shut. One, they’d made Coruscant. Two, Luke was part of his unit, meaning they shared the bleakness of daily routines if not much else.

Han pushed away from his desk for a look through the bulging window. Outside, shades of steelstone, syncrete and local marble joined in a fusion of grays that gave no quarter to the scant incursions of daylight. One week on this cramped hellhole of a planet, and it dragged on his mood with a vague, constant pressure. At least he’d figured out in advance that this operation wouldn’t be wrapped up with some fast shooting. Planetfall alone wasn’t going to break the bank.

With the guardian fleet gone, breaching the defense girdle had taken precise calculations and expert gunnery, though once they’d snagged a functional com buoy, coordinating sabotage had come easy. But of course there’d been casualties. Always too many of them. Half a dozen fighters got caught in the blowout of self-destructing mines, and a blockade runner’s concussion systems had overloaded at a brush with the resealing planetary shield. Twenty hours worth of frenzied air combat against the remaining fighter squads turned Operation Cleansweep into a nightmare. At the end of that day, success stank of sweat and ozone and burnt plastic. And that was just the beginning.

Han tapped out a restless little rhythm against the window-frame. He’d approached Luke before he’d accepted this particular posting, wanting to lay down not rules but some sort of groundwork for the coming weeks.

 _Listen, I don’t know what you’ll be looking for down planetside, but I want you on my team. Civilian or not, I don’t care_.

Luke met his blunt announcement with the guarded look he’d come to expect. _You think Command will let you pick and chose?_

 _Count on it_. Han made sure to paste confidence across a flicker of nerves. _And you’ll be able to do the same_. A square deal, no strings attached.

 _I don’t expect privilege_ , Luke answered immediately, but it could’ve been worse. Something like ‘I don’t need your protection,’ just to begin with, and a quick start of relief twitched in Han’s gut.

 _Your call_. He’d already turned to leave when a soft rustle of movement stopped him in his tracks.

 _Thanks, Han_. And it was the changed tone more than anything, softened by some unspoken question, that touched him with hope in a very raw spot.

Prepared to quote a thousand good reasons, he’d confronted Command shortly after and had their go-ahead before he’d cataloged the first three. Though the brass kept their discomfort under wraps, Han guessed that military protocol provided no clues for handling the last living Jedi.

 _And here we are_... He’d traded all his scraped-up confidence for an office with a view. A recent explosion in the vicinity had cracked the window, transparent polymer caught together by a crisscross of fibermesh. Through it, Han watched as several B-wings took off, rising for their scheduled rounds from the harsh, perpendicular symmetry. On the level below, an automated barge toured the garbage chutes, latching onto windowless fronts like an iron barnacle. Nothing else moved in the shadow-clefts.

Other times, cascades of light and noise must’ve flooded the city, but these days most remaining denizens of the area were either holed up in the bunker tracts or stalking the lower levels in search for Imperial marauders. And the way things looked, they’d all be grounded here for a long while to come.

Han rubbed his thumb across a fissure in the polymer and felt the waft of humid air that seeped through. A messy grid of battle lines traversed Coruscant and promised months of dirty trench warfare. In some sectors, spontaneous riots had cleared out the Imperial security forces, and in others, panicked administrators fell over themselves to barter for job security. But the loyalists thronged around strategic sites like gnats in a sewer and all too obviously took direct orders from the Palace. So long as the clique of top functionaries, veteran military and Palpatine’s elite guard held that fortress, peace remained a flapping pipe dream.

Through a gap between towers peeked black pinnacles and punctured the sky. Weird kind of privilege, to get a point-blank view of the Palace. Han turned away from it and shifted his glance to the grubby wall chrono. Only thirty minutes left ‘til the meeting. Might as well check up on the beta patrols before he confronted the crowd. More to the point, make sure that Luke had returned safely.

Some steps along the corridor, his mind took a headlong dive to the bottom levels of Imperial City. All the rot and the debris gathering there, like a dirt-crust over decades of power abuse, ‘til they called it the undercity: not quite part of living anymore, sealed off but undead. And Luke went down there every day. Calm, disciplined and totally committed, he was everything that could be expected from a Jedi. Not a mark of achievement that rated high in Han’s book, yet there was method to this madness, a logic he’d been forced to accept. Where ordinary vision faltered, only a Jedi could feel out the presence of enemies and intruders. And Luke was nothing if not conscientious about probing the murkiest corners in that lightless maze.

 _Although I’m starting to miss daylight and fresh air_ , he’d admitted only this morning, a brief frown trailing that statement. Like his private needs equaled a troubling distraction.

Han punched both hands into his pockets as he wandered down the passage that spiraled through the building’s core. Luke could take care of himself ― much better, in fact, than most other newcomers to this corrupt dump of a world-sized city ― but extended trips through the garbage-clotted twilight weren’t wholesome for anyone. At present, only a strict duty roster ensured that Luke didn’t get too friendly with the encompassing dark.

Counting off seven levels, Han turned into a corridor that ran past the pilots’ quarters, showers and several common rooms. A strange hiss and hum of electric equipment, spiced with fitful crackles of energy, came from one of the former construction halls. Frowning, Han stopped by the slide-door and eased his hand into the crack, reeling the plastene panel back by some inches.

Clouds of lightning unleashed between the smooth gray walls and thickened at the center. A hail of wild flashes poured around Luke’s frame, sizzling off the green blade that danced and whirled in soundless fury.

He’d rounded up a dozen remotes and trackers for training purposes, Han realized, once the rush of visual data unscrambled. Nothing unfamiliar or uncanny about it, except for the murderous barrage of light and the speed to which Luke had driven himself. The manic lighting revealed him in strobic cuts and sketched an image of his loneliness. Frantic energy reflected in the sweat that glistened on his forehead and his bare arms.

Discomfort crept up Han’s spine. Every sweep of the glowing ‘saber drew another line against comprehension, strokes and dashes in an alphabet he couldn’t read. Yet there was effort in this exercise, a forceful touch of muscle that’d never been there before. _If that’s what it takes to be a Jedi_ ―

In Han’s private lexicon, _Jedi_ equaled a state of loss, of endurance instead of living. He still remembered how excitement had flashed in the farmboy’s face when Luke first swung his lightsaber. The feral agility he’d brought to bear on Jabba’s henchmen, out by the Sarlacc pit. But at some point between then and now, the weightless intuition in Luke’s body language had been replaced by an embittered kind of intensity.

Before Han could make up his mind to enter or retreat, Luke wheeled, lowered his blade, and waved at the remotes. They ceased fire at once, lapsing into a strange congregation of silent, hovering metal. “Come on in.”

“Sorry to interrupt.” Han shouldered past the half-open door.

Luke shook his head and said, “Shoot at me.”

Thrown off-stride, Han met his eyes ― something feverish there, a shadow that moved with a restless need for a target ― and blurted, “What?”

“Random programming doesn’t really work for me anymore.” Luke indicated the remotes with a jerk of the head. “They slip into a pattern I can anticipate and react to.” His expression relaxed into something resembling tolerant humor. “Like you once told me, defending yourself against the living is something else entirely.”

“Yeah.” Recollection of their trip to Alderaan made a sapless appearance that mocked him. “Okay, makes sense,” Han added, his fingers unsnapping the blaster’s security with some reluctance. “Though this might work better outdoors.”

“I know.” Luke hitched up his shoulders in a brief shrug. “Let’s just give it a try, all right?”

Raising his blaster, Han reset the output level to minimum ― a motion Luke observed with impassive attention ― the metal grip an odd weight in his hand. “Ready?”

The pale green blade signaled, describing a small circle.

Han shifted his weight, abruptly out of tune with his body, like every muscle followed a purpose of its own. But the trick was to stop thinking and take the lid off survival instincts, so he blanked his mind with a glare at the barren walls.

The blaster dropped to hip level and flicked into his left hand, discharges whipping out in rapid succession.

Behind the radiant leaps of his blade, Luke had become an intangible target. He deflected each shot against the walls and ceiling, a zigzag of dissolute energy that sprayed into emptiness, and it was over in another second.

Luke deactivated his ‘saber and nodded, calmer now. “It makes a big difference.”

Ozone clogged the air. Han pushed his blaster back into the holster and slapped the security strap across it. Adrenaline shimmied in thick waves through his bloodstream.

“Look, if it helps, we can do this again,” he said, despite that ambivalent surge. “Maybe up on one of the landing pads. Right now, we gotta head off to the meeting with our backup troops.”

“Sure.” Luke picked up his tunic and swept his hair back, another minor transformation that restored his poise in a blink. Except for the flush of raw energy across his cheekbones.

Han took himself out the door before his glance could linger too long. A basic sense of companionship was piecing itself back together, and he’d take it from there. One thing at a time.

While they descended another six floors, Luke gave him a rundown of his latest recon tour. Countless passages delved through the undercity where this sector bordered on the Palace precinct, and intruders had to be tracked on foot. Thanks to Luke’s insights and instructions, Alliance patrols had already mapped a good quarter of the critical areas.

“I’ve come across an old power station twenty levels down,” he finished. “Somebody’s rigged new supply lines, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to tap into it as well.”

“Good, we can use that.” Han cocked his head at the burble that floated from below. Power failures were the most frequent complaint these days. “One bright spot for the family reunion.”

At the corner of his eye registered the brief curving of Luke’s mouth, a smile yielded out of habit or duty, yet void of real sentiment. As usual.

“There’s something else I can sense down there,” he said suddenly — and paused as if that opening had slipped by accident past his inner radar. “But I’m not sure...”

“Tell me anyway.” Han kept his tone level and his eyes straight ahead.

“A gap... a sense of emptiness and abandonment,” Luke tried to explain, then flung up a hand as if to revoke that. “Of course the undercity is full of places like that, but this is different. Larger. Deeper. And... shielded somehow.”

Han pushed the next question out through his teeth. “What if it’s Palpatine’s own private refuge inside the Palace? His death must’ve left a gap of some kind...”

He was starting to bristle at his own fumbling efforts — what the hell would _he_ know about all those spooky matters? — but Luke shook his head. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t think so. It’s not as dark as I’d expect it to be.”

A faint note of trouble laced his voice, and Han thought _good news_ before he could help it. But it wasn’t, not by any stretch of imagination. Less than black hardly equaled bright. “If you find out anything more, let me know,” he said, “even if it’s just a hunch. All right?”

Though Luke offered a nod in response, he had to be sure, and he broke his stride to drive the point home. “I mean it.”

“I know,” Luke answered quietly. “I know you do.”

When they turned the next corner, a roar of noise sloshed from the hall, the shuffling of feet and clamant conversations scaling a pitch of impatience. _Here we go again_. Han braced himself and entered the noisy arena.

Alliance officers and section leaders lined the back of the hall. On the left, the mixed bunch of recruits and self-appointed scouts had assembled, while the rest of the locals milled through the auditorium’s center. All the clan chiefs, company managers and family representtatives who’d supported an uprising in this sector without giving much thought to potential fallout.

A front of cordial tolerance firmly pinned on, Han made his way to the front. Various lingos and dialects spilled around him. The sector’s mixed populace included Aqualish, stray Machukans, Torteini and scaly Worren, all of them forced to shack up within the tight framework of Imperial law. Han supposed they’d been thrown together for nothing but superficial physical similarities. All of them ranked relatively high on Palpatine’s declining scale of ‘lesser humanoids,’ due to the correct number of extremities and visual organs.

A white spotlight refocused an odd number of sullen and skeptical looks on him as the hubbub settled by reluctant degrees. “Let’s start out with the basics, okay?” Han raised his voice close to shouting. “How about water supplies ― any more problems with that?”

Much like he’d expected, that question left little room for complaints. Four days ago, Lando’s team had taken charge of the central installation at the north pole. Meltwater from the polar caps flooded all the giant pipelines again, and Alliance squads guarded the major distribution points.

Reviving unrest bubbled up from the crowd. So they had water, and groceries weren’t about to run out either, but it hardly met their standards of contentment. Most of them lived several miles deep into the sector, at a safe distance from the shifting front.

“What about the com systems? And when can we finally leave this prison?” a Torteini squawked from somewhere near the back.

Han rubbed a hand across his neck. The building’s closed-loop ecosystem had been designed for jungle dwellers, and sweat trickled slowly into his collar while he fielded the bombardment of gripes and demands. Until someone in the front row rumbled, “You’re no better than the Palace flunkies.”

“Now listen good.” Han folded his arms. “No matter how this looks to you, it’s not a clean takeover, and it won’t happen in a day.” Mutters rolled through the room, and he studied their rhythms like unsteady power curves. He kept giving them variants of this speech, but the upshot was always unpredictable. “We’ve got Imperials trying to cut our supply lines,” he went on, “and we gotta come up with a working strategy to get into the Palace, so we can finally disable the planetary shield. Once that happens, you’ll be free to return to your lives or your homeworlds, or wherever you wanna go — for now, we’re stuck here together. But the _difference_ is, it’s all up to you. Your choice.”

His eyes kept roving across the crowd, making sporadic contact with traces of dissent, with thwarted hopes and ripe anxiety. Until, for a brief moment, hooded blue eyes caught him with electric force. From the far side of the hall, Luke was watching him intently.

 _Your choice_ , his own words lashed back at him. A pledge to freedom turned into decrepit fantasy, somewhere along the way.

Han cleared his throat. “We’ll be out of here that much faster, if we work on solving problems together. Matter of fact,” he added, “we could use more volunteers.”

* * *

The cantina could have been part of any Rebel base Luke recalled. Starkly utilitarian, the clutter of mismatched tables assembled in haste. A group of dated TeeBee droids operated the food-prep units behind a flaring metal counter.

“Smells like home,” Han said under his breath, but the sarcasm carried no bite. Amusement showed through, and a relaxed acceptance he’d slowly regained since their mission to Endor. “C’mon, let’s get it over with.”

Most of the beta teams had already passed through, and a short line trudged along the counter while Han traded news with the B-wing pilots who’d just finished dinner, their bright red flightsuits a vigorous splash in the room’s sobriety. Luke didn’t recognize their faces and supposed they’d arrived with Madine’s segment of the fleet. Rogue squadron had been deployed for troubleshooting all over the northern hemisphere, but there’d been so many replacements lately, he no longer knew all the names.

A wash of overbright neon glared off the counter as he picked up his tray. The molded plastene cradled a variety of nutrient substances that had been flavored and colored to accommodate human tastes.

“Don’t tell me,” Han said to one of the TeeBees. “The blue stuff’s supposed to be _borrt_ -hash, right?”

Back at the Rebel bases, second-guessing the galley droids had been a favorite pastime.

Han navigated easily towards a table in the corner. The steelplast chair groaned as he rocked back, folding long limbs around furniture designed for someone of slighter built.

“They’ll come around,” Luke said without preliminary. “The people in this sector simply need more time to adjust.”

“I guess.” Han’s mouth curled. “They’ve crammed everything into this idea of freedom, and now they realize it doesn’t mean the same to all of them.” His fork sketched lines across the bluish mass that doubled as _borrt_ -hash. “Trouble is, they’re not used to talkin’ to each other. Notice the way they all stick to their own language? And their Basic’s fluent.”

“You’ve already made some headway with these meetings,” Luke pointed out. “The Worren have been very cooperative today.”

Han cocked his head, a glint sparking at the back of his eyes, and scooped up a forkful of surrogate stew. The whirr of the ventilation unit distributed stale, hot air. On this level of the building, the rooms had no windows.

“Can’t come fast enough.” Han shrugged. “Freedom. I can relate to that.”

Some tables to the side, the B-wing pilots rose in one motion, tossing sloppy salutes in Han’s direction as they headed out.

“Don’t wolf it, General!” one of them called across.

Han returned a lax grin, an edge of bristling energy lighting clear through his slouch. He never seemed to notice how easily people followed him.

Luke swallowed a mouthful of the grainy pseudo-meat and lowered his glance to the table top. When he looked up again, Han’s eyes were on him, dark and probing. Luke settled his shoulders against a stir of discomfort.

“You know, if you’d prefer flying with the recon teams every once in a while, that can be arranged.” Han sent a pointed a glance at a rough syncrete wall. “Easy to go stir crazy in a place like this.”

It was something Luke sensed from all scouts and pilots, a gradual buildup of pressure that charged across the sector like static. All of them trapped under the shield that held an entire planet hostage. The air moved against him in slow, sticky waves.

Through the field of hazing tensions, he’d traced a tantalizing breach in the currents of the Force. An absence, or a shield to keep something hidden, he still couldn’t tell, but it pulled on him more than the promise of flying.

“I’ll let you know when it gets too bad,” Luke framed his answer with delay. “It’s important that we secure the major routes through the undercity, and I’m learning to find my way around there.”

“You’re doin’ a great job, too.” A terse wave of the hand cut into that comment, and Han shook his head. “Talk of stating the obvious.” Yet something flashed through his poise, intense enough for anger. “Still. All of this. Ain’t much like what we thought it’d be, huh?”

“It could be worse,” Luke returned mechanically.

The look Han gave him raised too many questions, its quiet directness assailing his shields. Something moved through it that could have been resentment, could have been pain.

 _Let me go_.

But wherever that thought came from, Han couldn’t be held responsible.

 

By the time Luke approached the lifts in the basement, the gamma patrols were trickling in, each troop of scouts led by Alliance commandos. Sidelong glances swung towards him and skidded off, curiosity and speculation curbed in a fraction. Luke walked over to the security scan.

“Ever take any time off at all?” The officer on duty made a valid attempt at a casual tone.

“What would I do with it?” Luke mustered a smile. Orange shimmers fanned around his left hand as the scanner confirmed his identity.

Three years with the Rebel forces had taught him how to blend in, but the substance of attention had altered since the Endor battle. A chilling element of awe had crept in that hatched rumors and grew rigid with expectations.

Without a backward glance, Luke stepped into the lift, automatically bracing himself as the cage began to drop in jerky stages. Warnings blinked crimson across the control panel and signaled entry into the undercity.

Less than a minute later, a dense, discolored twilight folded around him while the lift rattled back up to their base. Scents of decay clung to pipelines and sheer walls that glistened faintly with condensation. Still, he breathed easier here, where he wouldn’t be seen.

For a while Luke followed a familiar path, keeping to iron ledges that ran along flowstone foundations. Wings fluttered somewhere below, ruffled in brief alarm. He stopped to watch the glide of shadows through the deeper trenches, like pieces of the night tearing loose.

Around the next corner, the shape of an ancient gas container bulged from the dark. Corroded rungs traced the ribbed surface. When he climbed down, Luke heard the scrape and scuttle of small creatures inside the steel hollow. He jumped the final four meters and landed on a massive grating. Countless passages branched off from the old power station.

It was here that he’d picked up a furtive trace of something unusual, diffuse among the sediments of Darkness. In every direction, decayed energies thickened the air, and an unclean hunger ranged through past, present, and future. Each time he came down here, it threatened to engulf him, and he wrestled with it, always struggling for detached vision. Yet a breach beckoned somewhere ahead. Ancient and immobile, layered seamlessly through the quiet. Luke strained for closer contact with the Force, but the sensation blurred, like echoes trawled through a viscous fluid. Focus narrowed to the presence of the living, he crossed a walkway into the maze of uncharted tracks.

Almost immediately, a prickle touched the back of his neck. Breaking his pace, Luke peered into a narrow alley, the darkness humid and thick as tar.

“Come on out,” he said softly. “I won’t harm you.”

Faceted eyes caught slivers of twilight as they slid down his body, targeting the lightsaber.

“I saw you come here before,” answered a scratchy voice. “Jedi.”

“You have no reason to fear me.” Luke raised empty hands.

“A habit.” The stranger snorted. “Fear’s a friend in the undercity.” He spoke Basic with a lisping, jangling inflection.

“How long have you lived here?”

Instead of an answer, a rattling breath escaped, and a silhouette moved, silent as smoke, round the corner. The vaporous twilight revealed a male Rodian, skin stained with a strange mottling. “You must be the last of their kind.” His breath whistled anxiously, suggesting damaged lungs. “Are you looking for the temple?”

“Should I be?” The prickle down Luke’s back intensified.

Small spines twitched nervously along the Rodian’s head. “All the Jedi used to live there. Not much left now...”

“How far is it?” Expectation scaled sharply, framing hopes that escaped his control.

“Two hours, walking,” the Rodian said vaguely, but his eyes flicked in the direction of the old government precinct.

“Can you show me the way?” Luke stretched out hard and fast, but the strange haze he’d felt before mired his probes. As if something clogged the currents of the Force itself.

He caught his breath and steadied himself. Somewhere on this torn and teeming world, a deeper silence lingered. A place where he could safely lower his guard, far from the grating, restless energies that interfered with his bearings and took his breath away. A Jedi temple.

He pictured it wide and immense, filled with clean, bright airs. A sanctuary, holding out the legacy that was his to claim, all the duty and clear-cut purpose. A cold thrill lanced up through his middle.

“I need to see it,” he said urgently.

“Jedi,” the Rodian repeated, large eyes vulnerable against the thin face. “You have healers. Air’s foul with the dust in this place. I need help.”

“Then come back with me.” Very carefully, Luke reached out to brush the confused patterns of sentiment and found them churning with desperation. Not a trace of deception though, nothing but frantic fears haunting an unstable mind. “Our medics will provide treatment.”

The bald head shook. “No. Bring me medication, equipment. Tomorrow, same time. I’ll be your guide.”

The Rodian slunk back into the dark crevice, and Luke didn’t try to stop him.

* * *

“A temple?” Han rolled the word on his tongue like an alien taste. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Luke’s steps measured the length of his office. “I don’t know if it’s necessarily a place of worship. Perhaps that’s merely a traditional designation.” He stopped short by the damaged window, fingers linked tightly behind his back.

“And you think that’s the place you’ve been looking for?”

“Yes.” No trace of doubt or hesitation in Luke’s tone. “I need to go there.”

 _Figures_. Han directed a querulous stare at his datapad where the sector map glimmered in unfinished red and silver. Too many blanks for comfort. But instead of rushing off on his own, Luke had taken the matter to him this time, and that made all the difference.

“That guy could be leading you straight into a trap,” Han argued for form’s sake more than anything else.

“He needs medical attendance.”

“And you’re sure that’s all there is to it? No hidden agenda, just a straightforward bargain?”

Distant daylight outlined the set of Luke’s shoulders. Resolve laced his posture, a stubborn assurance Han recognized.

“I’m as sure as I can reasonably be,” Luke answered, in that oddly remote tone he’d acquired at some point since Bespin.

“Dirty dealing’s an artform with Rodians,” Han grumbled, refusing to wilt in the face of oblique Jedi insight. “And that’s first-hand experience talking.”

“I’m not that gullible, Han.” With two determined strides, Luke moved to the other side of his desk. The shadow of a smile haunted his mouth, concession or genuine amusement, Han couldn’t tell, but it cut through his defenses just like that.

“Yeah, still ― this ain’t worth takin’ crazy risks.” He read disagreement and withdrawal in the tautness of Luke’s jawline and plowed on anyway. “If things get too ugly, we turn back, all right? We’ll get there eventually, just a matter of time.”

“We,” Luke echoed with a faint quizzical inflection.

“I’m comin’ with you.” Han levered from his chair and switched off the datapad in the same motion. Arms braced on the desk, ready to weather whatever confrontation might follow.

For another moment longer, Luke regarded him with something like curiosity. Then he said, “You’ll need a strong torch.”

 

A faint drizzle streaked through the undercity, tapping out a languid rhythm in the dark. Not that natural rainfall could percolate this far; had to be condensation gathering into clouds and dripping back down. Han turned up his collar against the wetness.

Two paces ahead, their guide ducked past the skeletal remains of fallen cable tracks. Unhesitating, Luke followed suit, the controlled grace of his movements all the more visible next to the Rodian’s painful shuffle. Han could hear his breaths snort and wheeze inside the mouthpiece. An awful rattle in his chest evidenced some filthy lung disease that antibiotics and an oxygen bottle weren’t going to cure. But the Rodian’s mind was tight-locked against enrolling at a medical facility. Like he’d sooner lose his life than leave his grungy hideout.

At the next corner, they turned off into a sloping corridor and descended another level. Hobbling over the buckled plates of a dead glidewalk that creaked mercilessly at each step.

Han kept one hand on his blaster, his hackles raised and every warning instinct tuned up to full volume. Like oil, darkness seeped into every cranny and crevice, conjuring phantom hazards. From somewhere far below rose a dry, muted thud. Next thing Han knew, his thumb toyed with the switch of his glowtorch, tricked by a nervous temptation to aim a revealing glare at some of those dark corners. _Smart move_ , he scoffed at himself. Guaranteed to draw unwanted attention of every kind.

The stench of decay thickened the air like old fury, and in some lightless canyon, a dry staccato went off, suspiciously like the bark of ancient pulse guns. And what if the survivors of earlier power contests were still slugging it out on the lower levels? Perhaps older wars piled up through the undercity, each conflict forced from daylight in turn, displaced but never resolved. And the same thing could happen again now, once the loyalists had to yield ground.

The Rodian clucked under his breath, head weaving anxiously as he appraised a walkway before them. “Hurry!” hissed from the mouthpiece. “Not far now.”

Han flicked the security off his blaster. Some greasy puddles ahead flashed up in sudden silver, reflecting a glare somewhere high above. Floodlights searching for enemy craft, a sure sign they’d entered the government precinct. And the Rodian got more wired with every inch they covered.

They slunk through a gap between steel-plated walls. On the far side of a black trench loomed a curve of seamless marble, strangely unmarred, a foreign element.

“There.” The Rodian gulped quick breaths through the oxygen tube. “Use... the service entrance... on the other side.” He started inching off along the ledge.

“Hey, wait!” Suspicion snapping into full gear, Han grabbed their guide’s elbow. “What’s in there?” he asked roughly. “Why d’you want us to go looking?”

The Rodian’s large eyes went milky with nervousness. “He’s a Jedi.” His narrow head tilted in Luke’s direction. “The temple... they all... so many of them died there.”

“It’s all right.” Luke had slipped closer. “Just tell us, how do you know so much about it?”

“My mother!” the Rodian spluttered into the breath mask. “She worked for them in the kitchens... long ago. I was very... young.” The moment Han dropped his hand, he shrank back and mumbled something in his native language.

“What else do you―” Luke started, when the harsh rhythm of booted steps struck resonant iron some levels above. With a shrill whistle, the Rodian lurched forward and down the gorge of an old sewer pipe.

Han froze, alarm running chills through his veins ― _it’s a goddamn trap a trap_ ― but the footfalls stomped past overhead without slackening their pace. Slowly, the sound merged with the throb of his pulse and grew dim.

“Just a patrol detail,” Luke mouthed. “Come on.”

“What about our guide?”

“He cannot be saved.” With a small shrug, Luke stepped to the rim of the ledge and leaped lightly across three gaping meters.

Han stared after him. _Like he just doesn’t care_. Back before the Endor battle, a single Rodian’s fate would’ve mattered more to Luke than all the Jedi temples and their mysteries combined. Before Bespin.

 _Don’t think about it, just ― don’t_. Han breathed in hard and took a running leap across the trench. A convective wind poured against his face as he caught his balance on the far side. “Now what?”

“We look for the backdoor.” Rain glistened on Luke’s face, and he trailed his fingers across the smooth marble as they circled the massive tower, step by slow step. From deep within the stone, thready glitters shadowed his touch ― then he stopped abruptly. “Here.”

The service entrance hailed them with three square meters of unbroken durasteel, not so much as a rivet betraying lock or hinge. Han slid his palm flat across the surface, probing for the faint vibrations of some electronic mechanism that could be triggered from outside.

“No,” Luke said softly, too close, his voice a breath of coolness against the side of Han’s neck. “I think I know.”

Fingers splayed against flawless steel, he stilled completely. All around them, the drizzle refracted a distant brightness. A moment later, Luke’s head jerked up, an unworldly gleam in his eyes. Indigo and silver, mysteries conjured by the light that shifted across the planes of his face, and his fingers were starting to tremble from some inner strain, if it wasn’t sheer impatience.

Then a low-frequency hum rose through the door. Soundless, it swung inward. Before Luke could move again, Han brushed past, his blaster raised. One brisk step took him across the threshold.

“Han, wait!” Luke hissed at his shoulder.

The beam of his glowtorch lashed into musty blackness. Stale air filled the hall they’d entered, and dust motes stirred in the focused brilliance.

“Why, there’s nothing―”

A scraping metallic noise cut Han off, and he breathed out a curse when Luke yanked him aside and against himself, flattened to the wall. Something glittered overhead, came ratcheting down just inside the door ― a blade, some two meters wide ― and struck the floor not a pace away.

 _Booby-trapped_ , Han realized, heart pounding as a metallic clang resounded through the dark. _Should’ve expected that_. Imperials must’ve secured every hidden entrance a long time ago. But his senses were elsewhere engaged, keyed up and straining as he traced the breath that expanded Luke’s ribcage. The press of Luke’s body against his own.

Elbow, hip and thigh. Angular and sharply defined against the wash of unfocused memories, each sensation striking home in the nerve. A spill of tension trailed electric prickles through Han’s gut.

“Careful,” Luke mouthed, not breaking the closeness yet. “From now on, stay behind me.”

Han managed a flustered noise of assent. “Right. Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it.” With wrenching abruptness, Luke pulled away and crossed the hall in quick strides.

Han scrubbed his knuckles across his forehead. _Think nothing of it_. He’d heard that before, a casual brush-off in the middle of a dust storm. Still infinitely warm by comparison.

On the far side of the hall, Luke’s torch outlined an old service lift. Blaster fire had fused the control panel into cratered slag, but right next to it, another door opened into a stairwell, stone steps rising along a wide spiral. Han’s torchbeam faltered in the lofty darkness above.

“Come on.” Luke dashed up the stairs without a backward glance.

Some levels up, a short corridor led to interconnected halls. Sunken pits and rows of large feeder sockets labeled them generator chambers, though all the equipment had been dismantled. Dead power leads traversed the roof in bundles, their ruptured ends dangling.

“Going by the size of it all,” Han said on their way back to the stairwell, “this temple must’ve been a minor city.” He’d kept his voice low, but the tunneling depth hollowed the sound, giving it back in ghostly murmurs.

 _Many of them died here_ , the Rodian’s words skittered from the back of his head and tricked him with apprehensions.

“I don’t even know how big the old order used to be.” Luke quickened his pace. “There must’ve been thousands.”

 _Or more_. Han pulled up his shoulders. Truth was, he didn’t care for the feel of this place, the vast, hulking pressure of storey after storey above, the resounding marble hollows and arches. Everything was outsized, a monument to some high and mighty ambition.

On the next five levels, all passages were blocked by piling debris, and the higher they climbed, the more rubble littered the stairs, each storey falling into cavernous darkness at their backs. No surprise at all, when they finally ran into a dead end.

An avalanche of crumbled syncrete and splintered stone had crashed down, and there was no telling if the upper levels had been left in a heap of rubble, or if new structures had been built on top. Han swept his light over jags of old ruin and snorted. So this was it. No revelations, no mysteries, just the trademark decay of Coruscant’s netherworld.

“There has to be a way!” Luke said through his teeth. Just then, his torchbeam struck a narrow doorway, half buried in the crush. But instead of drawing on the Force again, he flung himself at it, jamming his shoulder against the door that squealed and gave an inch or two. “Han!”

With a sinking feeling, Han threw his weight into the joint effort until the door jerked back, scraping angrily against floor tiles. Nothing but watery dimness showed up ahead, yet Luke pushed on as if the gates of salvation’d just snapped open. Han clicked off the glowtorch and clipped it to his belt.

Before them, a long corridor extended in a straight line. Rubble-strewn, the high windows framed in blunted glassine shards. When Han leaned out, he spotted a smashed reflector array that must’ve served to focus daylight into this tract.

He lengthened his strides to catch up with Luke who’d hurried on at a driven pace. A phalanx of doorways breathed their stale chill at them, spaced evenly along the left side of the hall. A residential wing of some kind, maybe. But whatever Luke hoped to discover, material clues weren’t jostling for attention. Random demolition had twisted through these rooms, all the slide doors jammed, warped or broken down. And there was little left inside.

Han’s torchbeam picked out a wooden board, scraps of plastic, a clay figurine missing arms and legs. Servants’ quarters, he guessed, but a soot crust covered everything, the uniform mark of lost years, lost lives.

After they’d checked out the first fifteen rooms, he stopped counting. Luke stalked from door to door, silent through his dogged search, the constant rise of tension snapping in every step. When he broke his stride of a sudden, Han almost bumped into him.

“What is it?”

Something glinted on the floor, and Luke was quick to sweep it up.

“Nothing.” A curved metal shard, the fragment of an ammo container or a droid’s carapace, it didn’t matter. With a faltering breath, Luke turned it over in his fingers. Nervous pressure seemed to be squeezing at him. “Where do I start?”

“Start what?”

“Rebuilding the Jedi order,” Luke returned, his voice low and rough.

“That what you wanna do?” Unease swept Han and raised a whole spate of questions in the process.

“It’s my legacy, and my duty.” For all the purpose in that statement, Luke’s voice drifted, vague in the desolation of a looted room. “Before he died, Yoda asked me to pass on what I’ve learned.”

The shard dropped back to the floor, a small explosion of sound that jolted Han for no reason. _Yoda_. At least he’d heard that name before ― first in the freezing wastes of Hoth, and from Leia later. The last surviving Jedi Master who’d chosen to live in a bog.

“And he didn’t give you any more pointers?”

“Perhaps he didn’t think it was necessary.” Luke shoved a hand into his hair and straightened his back.

“He hoped it would just... come to you, or something?”

“Perhaps.” A clipped motion of Luke’s shoulders discarded that possibility. “Though perhaps he didn’t think I’d survive the confrontation with my father. Ben warned me against it, too.”

“But Ben never told you―”

“Later,” Luke said curtly. “On Dagobah.”

A soft prickle crept over Han’s skin. Old Kenobi had never visited that bog, at least not in Luke’s company. From the side, Luke watched him with a guarded expression.

Whichever way conversing with the dead played out, Han wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And something else tugged his mood into anger. “I don’t know ― correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like a contradiction to me. Weren’t you supposed to confront Vader―”

“Kill him,” Luke cut in, his voice hard and dry. “At least that’s what Ben suggested to me.” 

“―and if they didn’t think you’d survive, how’re you supposed to rebuild anything?” Han’s anger gained a cold edge.

“I guess they considered all contingencies, but they couldn’t exactly predict the future.” Luke’s tone was laced with rare irony. “I remember Yoda couldn’t fathom―” He broke off and turned briskly into the corridor.

“Couldn’t what?”

Luke stopped by the next window, rigid like a sentry. “I was ― I asked him if you’d die on Bespin. You and Leia. He told me that the future’s always in motion.”

Disbelief overran Han’s mind. At some point in Luke’s account, time had come unraveled, snarled and out of sequence.

“I had a vision,” Luke said after a long pause. “I could feel your pain, and I wanted to leave right away.” Words chosen with clinical exactness, dropped like stones down a well. Delivered in the same flat tone he’d used with the inquiry board.

Adrift in the gap between that tone and the things he’d said, Han wrapped both hands round the window-sill. From the gloom outside, a conglomerate of neutral grays stared back at him.

“You could tell what was happening to us.” Nothing but an echo of Luke’s statement, yet he needed to hear himself say it, so the words could slip past incomprehension. “Everything? You could _feel_ that?”

“Yes.”

The knowledge wound up tight in Han’s gut, a live wire. From it sparked a deeper connection, raw with a power that’d rearranged their lives, like it or not.

When he turned, the hard lines of Luke’s profile masked the recollection and whatever it meant to him. Only his poise betrayed leashed tension, urging towards a brink of some kind. Some place as unsafe as they came.

Han put all further questions on hold and gestured down the corridor. “Let’s go on, check out the rest of the place.”

With a terse nod, Luke pushed away from the window.

Mere minutes later, they reached a wide, circular hall. Though mortar and stone fragments crunched underfoot, the chamber’s airy feel eased some of the cramped alert from Han’s muscles. He narrowed his eyes and took a moment to recognize the pallid hint of morning, an abrupt reminder of missing hours.

From steep shafts in the vault, daylight needled through the smoky dimness and lit a sheen of color along the wall. Up close, Han traced remnants of a glazed mosaic through the coating of dirt and dust. He scrubbed his sleeve across it.

A pair of hands, wrapped tight around ― a lightsaber?

Purple folds, the upper half of a white tree. Thin lettering laced through its branches. _The Force in everything_ , Han read, _and everything in the Force_.

Frowning, he pulled a rag from his vest pocket and wiped at another stretch of wall, where dusky outlines suggested something larger. Though he felt Luke move up close, he didn’t stop. From the grime emerged the image of a man in robes, long hair and beard streaming in wild movement or savage wind. Carbon scorings stretched across his open hands, and from them flowed a lettered banderole. _Release all passion to the Force, for you will_ —

The rest of it was covered in a thick crust of soot, but the face above smiled enigmatically. Some grand old Jedi Master, Han supposed. Long dead, or gone to merge with the Force or whatever.

“What d’you think that means?” He stepped back and gestured at the fragmented motto.

“Quiet, Han.” Beside him, Luke reached a hand to the pitted landscape of stone and glass. “I need to focus.”

Not much of a chance for it, strung up as he was. Han swallowed a snap retort, and turned away from the battered image. _Release all passion, right_. Some faded Jedi adage that had nothing to do with Luke, with who he was. Silence settled back in, turning his own breaths into a grating disturbance. While Luke went as still as that looming figure.

 _Trapped_ , Han thought and curled his hands into fists. _Hoping for clues where nothing remains_. And this whole temple was like a tomb, where Luke might just bury himself. “Look,” he started, “I don’t think―”

“Could you leave me alone for a while?” Luke cut him off.

“Sure, suit yourself,” Han growled and took himself out of range at a furious pace.

On the far side of the hall, he found another stairwell that ran up to a turret of some kind. Just as well, the air was bound to be less stifled somewhere higher up. Taking two steps at a time, Han climbed to the chamber at the top.

Familiar combustion smells enveloped him, and dust streamed in ribbons of daylight, almost scalding after those hours of solid murk. He squinted. Instead of window panes, stone filigree interrupted the wall segments on three sides. Creepers wound through the gaps, brittle and black with soot.

Close to the perforated stone, Han could see scraps of the cityscape, remote in the morning haze. From the look of it, this ancient watchtower thrust up to the lowest habitable level of Imperical City. A tepid breeze touched his face as he walked from one segment to the next. Some of the blocks out there had to be government buildings, marble ramparts driven into the city’s older geometry. The sound of restive engines churned on the air.

With a glance at his wrist compass, Han culled up the maps he’d memorized to pinpoint their location ― but a soft noise from behind scrambled his efforts. When he turned, Luke stood in the mesh of light, and floating dust played in shimmers round his frame.

“Han.” A muscle worked in his throat. “I’m―”

“’S all right.” Han waved off an apology that he didn’t know how to take. “Place getting to you?”

Luke dipped his head and took a short step forward. “There’s nothing for me here. Nothing.”

 _Could’ve told you_ , Han thought what he couldn’t say and abruptly wished he’d been wrong.

“It’s like...” Luke started to move around the chamber, pacing out the pressure that seemed to be hanging over him. “Mere echoes of memories. Cut off. When they died. And that’s all.”

Defeated. And it showed, unrelieved, when jots of daylight slid across Luke’s chest and face.

Han swallowed dryly. Hell, it hurt to see Luke like this, like a ghost roaming the trashed chambers of a past that didn’t belong to him. Han curled his fingers tight against an idiotic instinct to reach out, like that could make a real difference.

“There’s gotta be records of some kind,” he suggested, plucking spurious comfort from thin air. “Archives, I don’t know — somewhere. There used to be Jedi settlements on many worlds, right?”

“But not one escaped Palpatine’s purge, for all I know. Not one.” Luke walked up to the nearest window screen and leaned against it, his shoulders sagging. “How can I train anyone? My own training was too short, and some things I taught myself...”

To Han’s ears, it was all too reminiscent of Imperial drafting practice. Wrench the recruits through some tough drills and throw ‘em to the rancors. Never mind that he wasn’t in any position to judge, he came close to blurting out what he thought of Luke’s supercilious teachers.

“Sure doesn’t sound like Yoda or Kenobi had it all mapped out in advance,” he compromised. “What’s the whole point?”

“Ben wanted Vader destroyed. Sometimes I wonder if that was all that counted for him.” Ragged shadows slipped across Luke’s features when he let his head fall back. “To think that he told me to trust my feelings. And it turns out he didn’t trust them himself, or he would have told me the truth about my father. Instead he fed me white lies, Jedi style.”

His scathing tone was like nothing Han recalled. Anger rolled through his bloodstream, resentment building hot and caustic to seize on more than just the manipulations of two old schemers. Less than a month ago, he would’ve sworn that Luke and cynical derision couldn’t exist within the same continuum.

“I was their chosen tool,” Luke finished tiredly. “I can’t guess why they kept so much from me, or what else they withheld.” His profile showed nothing but chiseled restraint now, a forceful blank. “I couldn’t stay angry with Ben, but I still don’t understand his reasons.”

 _Couldn’t stay angry?_ Han shook his head. Hell, nothing wrong with some healthy, justified outrage. They’d primed Luke like a weapon and left him to deal with the fallout alone.

“Probably thought of the greater cause,” Han growled, unasked. Incongruously, he noticed that Luke’s hair was growing back into the old unruly tousle, no longer the tidy cut that looked so odd on him. “I don’t think I’d be as generous in your place.”

“A Jedi has to be calm, to communicate with the Force,” Luke answered, as if quoting some dusty piece of Jedi wisdom. “At least Yoda taught me how to dispel all emotion.”

A snide remark died on Han’s tongue as the words sank in and acquired the flavor of something ominous. _Release all passion. Is that what you’re doin’?_

Impossible. Nobody could detach so completely, and Luke’s feelings had always burned close to the surface. Made him who he was.

A hint of movement outside hooked Han’s attention, and he squinted through the pierced stone. Along one of the dark ramparts marched a figure in scarlet robes, stray fingers of daylight gleaming on a sculpted helmet.

“Look at that!” Han’s glance tracked the Imperial guard with disbelief. “Didn’t realize we’d come this close to the Palace!”

Half-finished thoughts faltered when he caught the look on Luke’s face. Jarred, and frozen. As if he’d just collided headlong with an ugly old memory.

“Let’s go.” Luke swung around as if to tear down the stairs, but stopped again at the top. “I had to come to Bespin,” he said abruptly. The room’s strange lighting kindled in his pale eyes as he turned back. “I could never regret that.”

“Never thought you did.” Han reached out before the rest of his mind could catch up. A tremor ran up against his palm when he clasped Luke’s shoulder ― something in him stretched taut and close to snapping. He’d never been on edge like this, not even en route to Endor. “Luke, you oughta know...”

A halting shake of the head, ruptured movement without direction, then Luke stepped back into his circle of perfect solitude. Smears of soot down his tunic, in his hair, but the set of his mouth had loosened at little. A first layer of coolness melting off, Han thought.

They descended to the level of the hall without another word. Han flicked up his glowtorch to probe at the dark in the lower stairwell. “Think there might be another exit at this end?”

“The building seems undamaged on this side,” Luke returned. “It’s worth a try.”

Minute after minute, their steps clattered down the narrower flight of stairs, a determined rhythm, while the dark curdled above and below. No doorways and no landings. The cadence of circular movement was starting to spin Han’s head by the time they reached the bottom. When he bounded down the final steps, his torchbeam swiveled across walls built from rugged blocks instead of glossy marble. And the single door had been secured with an old-fashioned deadbolt.

“Guess that’s our exit right here.” He consulted his compass for directions. “We’re two levels above the point where we started out.”

“Let’s see where we are.” Luke wrestled the bolt aside, and a tired groan went up from iron hinges as he yanked the door open.

Outside wafted the stink and gloom of the undercity, but the drizzle had stopped. Han blinked at the patchwork of slate, cinder and charcoal, stringers of steam wreathing flowstone arches and structural steel. “Wonder if this used to be an escape route of some kind.”

Daylight was a thin seam stitched across the structures high above, but something else nagged insistently at the back of Han’s head. In his mind’s eye, he revised the cant of plunging lines and distorted angles and came up with startling intersections. “You know what I’m thinkin’―?”

“The Palace,” Luke said beside him, a near whisper.

“Exactly. I’m startin’ to think they might’ve built part of it atop the temple ruins.”

Not that sneaking up this close meant they’d nose out some unlocked backdoor next, but it’d do for a start.

They crept along a ledge that sloped past the stone bulwark when a constant subliminal noise struck a note of recognition. The sound of running water, tumbling through hollow echoes.

“Y’hear that?” Han murmured.

Pausing in mid-stride, Luke tilted his head and pointed at dull glints beneath an iron grating. “Water pipes.”

“And I bet I can tell where they’re leading.” Han knelt to jam his varidriver under the grating’s edge, prying it off to reach down. His hand curved around flawless steel, and the torchbeam glanced along smooth perfection, not a trace of age and corrosion anywhere in sight. Two large pipes angled left some ten meters down.

Han whistled through his teeth. “This could be it. The key we’ve been lookin’ for all along.”

“Water supplies for the Palace.” Luke squatted beside him.

“And with the right additive we can send ‘em all to sleep before they know what hit them.”

“There must be all kinds of filters installed.”

“So we gotta cook up something their filters ain’t programmed for,” Han countered.

He met Luke’s eyes across mere inches ― and in one instant, the muted rush of water swirled memory to the surface. Hours spent underground on Ord Mantell. His hand sliding across Luke’s bruised ribs. A convolution of desires thrumming unresolved between them. The harsh taste of missed chances collected at the back of Han’s throat.

A distant screech broke him out of it, reverberations drifting slowly through stagnant air. In the murk beside him, Luke crouched, the very image of battle alert in the face of no tangible danger. Was it the muggy pressure of the undercity, was it memory, or could he feel some residue of Palpatine’s presence, so near to the Palace? Han made an effort to send that unpleasant notion packing.

“We’d better get outta here,” he said, forcing a casual tone, “or we’ll be late for duty.”

 

By the time they reached their base, weariness moved through him like a fever and frazzled the plans he’d been hatching. In the cantina’s biting glare, Han procured a large mug of kaffin and winced when it blistered in his empty stomach. His datapad parked on a table, he set to work. Until someone slipped into the seat next to him.

“You need to sleep,” Luke said.

“I need to figure this out,” Han retorted.

“That’s what I thought.” Luke combed his fingers through matted hair and leaned an elbow on the table. Merciless lighting picked out lines of loss and fatigue round his eyes.

Han studied him for a long moment. “Listen, about the temple... I’m sorry you didn’t find what you were hopin’ for.”

Luke gave a small shrug, but a flicker of warmth rose to his eyes. “Not your fault.”

At the pit of Han’s stomach, the kaffin’s heat loosened a frisson of something as volatile and ambiguous as hope. His smile came out crooked, and he didn’t care. He gestured at the datapad. “You know, I could use some help with this.”

* * * * *

Three days later, Han steered a skimmer through the heart of the sector. Plans for an offensive against the Palace were shaping up, but spilling sensitive data across the standard frequencies would’ve been careless even in a lesser state of paranoia. The evening before, after they’d fused all those partial undercity maps into one seamless whole, he’d suggested a Command Staff meeting in an inconspicuous locale. The whole gambit relied on absolute secrecy.

From the passenger seat beside him, Luke scanned the succession of storefronts, holoscreens, and torpid snack barges cruising for customers. Noise teemed through the stew of exhaust and chemical fumes from countless dyeworks.

“Almost there,” Han said, pointing ahead. “The grand old _Starway_.”

Luke trailed a skeptical glance up the hotel’s facade, at least a century past its prime. Sixty stories of pericrete cast a long shadow across their approach, pockmarked where prefab ornaments had been knocked off.

“Hails back to Old Republic days,” Han elaborated, “or so Leia tells me.” He stole a look at Luke’s face, profiled by streaks of electric color. “Some Aqualish combo took over, started converting the place to a gambling hall, though it’s been more of a refugee camp lately.”

“Convenient cover,” Luke summed it up, still absorbed by the view, if it wasn’t something else entirely.

“Right.” Han set the skimmer down on a landing pad.

The spare sound of glass chimes floated around them as they entered the lobby on level twelve, where gold-leaf trimmings and rusty dispenser units made an uneasy marriage. A round-faced lieutenant hurried up to meet them by the lift.

“Thirty-first floor,” he instructed and waved them into the cabin, all compliance and uncrinkled decorum. “Former Jubilee Suite.”

And it deserved the adjunct _former_ more than anything else, Han decided the moment they entered the antechamber. Ventilation did a fair job at distributing generations of dust through a room that looked like an all-night shelter for overstuffed furniture.

“Not a minute too soon!” Leia was seated on a divan ― possibly the youngest among the stragglers ― a datapad propped on its arm.

“Traffic’s been heavier than usual,” Han offered. When he stepped over and squeezed her shoulder, Leia’s smile kindled easily, and she rose to meet him in a swift, warm hug. After all these dragging days, he was glad to see her, gladder than he might’ve expected. “You doin’ okay?”

“Fine,” she answered a little too fast, her glance tracking over to Luke. “How about you?”

“Leia. It’s been too long.” The glaring evasion brought a frown to her face, but Luke leaned in quickly to kiss her cheek, his smile tailored to the requirements of the moment.

Han turned aside a fraction too late. Hot-wired memory lashed across their reunion and cast all that he missed into stinging relief. Luke’s vibrant energy, his unchecked, dazzling smile that could light up a room. And with abrupt intensity, Han ached to see just a trace of it. Luke’s quick, passionate mind, the wild streak in him ― where had all of that gone?

 _Died along with his father, in the Emperor’s hellfire_ , a morbid little voice proposed from the back of his head, before he could tune it out. _Damnit, I want him back_...

“Have you got the simulation ready?” Leia’s voice returned him to the room’s questionable charms. She gestured at a pair of ornate swing-doors. “Rieekan handed out your memo the moment he arrived, and they’re all waiting in the parlour to discuss the details.”

“Got it right here.” Han patted his jacket down ‘til he’d located the data cube in a sealed pocket and wrenched his mind back on track. No time for nostalgic hankerings when the whole cortege of aides, section leaders and Intell agents must’ve crowded into the suite alongside Generals Rieekan and Madine. “Luke missed a lot of sleep to get it done in time,” he went on. “He’ll tell ‘em exactly how―”

“Han,” Leia stopped him, “you know that’s not possible.”

But he didn’t. For a breath and another, Han stared at her. After their discovery by the temple, he’d figured that Command would rethink their stiff-necked stonewalling tactics and show some gratitude at last. “They’re still shutting Luke out?” he flared. “And for how much longer are we supposed to put up with that godsbedamned―”

“It’s not important,” Luke’s calm tones brought him up short. “We’re looking at a chance to end the siege in a week instead of months, and cut our losses significantly. Nothing else matters.”

Han met his eyes with tight-lipped annoyance. _Cut our losses, right. And what’s gonna be left once all the cutting’s done?_ “If you say so.”

With that look of dispassion plastered across his face, Luke seemed like a near-perfect clone of something that should’ve been desirable. All surface and no resonance. And the missing rest chimed precisely with the hollow that lodged under Han’s breastbone. He couldn’t bear to look at Luke any longer and turned stiffly on his heel.

When he entered the parlour a step behind Leia, the usual debates were well underway. An oblong table buckled under the combined weight of portable data consoles and com units that sprinkled the half-light with bluish reflections. Only a few eyes lifted to acknowledge the latecomers.

“It’s unfortunate that we can’t simply cut off the Palace’s water supply,” some Intell wiseguy said. “We’ll need a heavy narcotic or a toxin. One that doesn’t contain any of the common compounds.”

“Surely the chemical industry in sector fifteen can provide all necessary ingredients,” another argued from the back.

Han squared his shoulders and stepped into the tight inner circle. “We’ll have to insert the drug close to the Palace,” he said. “Just take a look at the sewerage layout. With a complicated distribution system like that, there’s no way we can control the effects from a distance.”

Much like he’d expected, Madine’s brow furrowed unhappily. The veteran military always preferred heroic frontal attack over double-dealing and subterfuge. As if dragging out this mired state of civil war equaled spotless honor in the hereafter.

“Even so,” Madine began, “they’ll be alerted before such a drug can affect everyone. According to Intell’s estimates, the current Palace population comes up to several thousand. We won’t set foot inside without a fight.”

“Yeah, but they’ll be confused, maybe some are going to panic.” Han shrugged, the conclusion plain and inevitable. “We’ll have to strike before they get a chance to identify the source of the problem. All a matter of precise timing.”

“Our strike teams must be deployed on the ground and in the air,” General Rieekan stressed. That was a given.

Han turned towards him. “Besides ground-to-air combat, there’s the undercity. If too many Imperials escape to the lower levels, that’s where the war’s going.”

A rebellious nerve twitched in his fingers when he flipped the data cube down on the table. Moments later, maps and schematics chased across the screens, building up to a full-blown simulation of battle arrangements for the undercity. Luke’s work, most of it, spiced up with some of his own contraband tactics that were bound to chafe Madine’s fond spot for fair play.

Mind limited to impersonal necessities, Han delivered the required explanations. A neat little game plan, all right. Only this morning, when he’d staggered off to his bunk for a brief rest, the foretaste of success’d had him wired like an astromech on recharge. Now the simulation played out before him in abstract, indifferent patterns.

 _Wish it was all over_ , he thought numbly. _Hell, I wish it was over already_.

 

It took them over an hour to agree on a workable scenario, due to be refined once Intell had set up their very own drug lab. Glad to escape the stifled suite, Han stalked towards the lifts, as if reaching the polluted outdoors could wipe his head clean.

He found Luke on the landing pad, sitting cross-legged in the tepid shadow of their skimmer like tranquility personified. Afternoon poured a soggy haze across the city.

“How did it go?” Luke didn’t take his eyes off whatever vista he’d been contemplating.

“Pretty much like we’d expected,” Han told him. “Some modifications to the strike team deployment though. Can’t draw another fighter squad off the north pole.” Arms folded, he walked to the edge of the pad and recited the basic facts. Easier to talk to Luke without looking at him, and burrow into a cheap pretense of business-as-usual instead.

“How soon does Intell think we’ll be ready?”

“Hard to estimate at this point.” Han gestured vaguely. “Could be anything from a couple days to a fortnight.”

His eyes traced a footbridge that angled off the pad, glinting with feeble daylight like an unfinished skyway. Some twenty meters across the street, one of those improvised little markets had sprouted along terraces and rooftops. Stalls and sales-cabs flashed their jaunty colors like banners, and competing brands of music drifted across in jumbled rhythms.

“We’ve got another half-hour to kill while Rieekan’s people download those surveillance files for us,” he said in afterthought.

Only the slightest rustle from behind announced Luke’s approach. “And Leia’s still busy?” he asked. “You haven’t seen much of each other lately.”

“Yeah, well...” Han shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. Hell of a time, to broach that particular subject. He’d been waiting for the right moment to tell Luke, without turning the whole thing into some grave-faced announcement of defeat. Or maybe he’d just flinched from adding to the pile of disappointments. “Leia ‘n I,” he started, unease dragging at each word. “See, it’s — by the time we got here, we’d figured out that it just ain’t happening.”

“What, Han? What isn’t?” Disbelief laced Luke’s quiet tones, compelling Han to face him after all.

“All the romance, the frills ‘n wedding-bells,” he said too bluntly and felt his mouth twitch. “Leia thinks we’ll stand a better chance being friends, and I happen to agree with her.” It came out like something from a manual for responsible adults. Fifteen steps towards your love-life overhaul.

“I find that hard to believe,” Luke said after a pause, words measured in a way his tone wasn’t. “It looked as if...”

“It looked different to both of us for a while,” Han picked up the loose thread when nothing more was forthcoming. “But when all’s said and done, it’s... the kinda thing that’s got its own place ‘n time, and we both had our reasons, only they didn’t carry much water.”

Discomfort scaled up by the moment. Luke watched him as if gauging the possibility that he’d been palmed off with a mere snippet of the truth.

 _You belong with Leia_ , Han recalled, the same sting still attached to the memory. “I know you said―”

“I thought you’d made up your―”

They’d both launched on the same breath, and something in the way Luke faltered sent a quick frisson into Han’s gut. He sketched the scope of it into thin air. “Lots of things’ve changed since I went into carbon freeze.”

Scooting up from the street canyon, a news-cab wizzed by with a blare. It took no longer than that, and Luke’s expression was shuttered once more. “All this time,” he said, some unfathomable pressure in his voice. “All this time, and you didn’t tell me. It’s not just Command, shutting me out.”

Caught out cold, Han opened his mouth and found nothing to say. Missing his cue, his chance to set the record straight, when Luke turned aside sharply and headed towards the footbridge. Not quite storming off, but pretty damn close.

Delayed anger jabbed through Han’s chest as he stared after him. _Is that what I get? For sticking my neck out, for putting up with all this—?_ But the sight of Luke, striding swiftly across the narrow arch, unsettled that line of thinking. A silhouette before the sullen sky, slender as a blade. Like it might be the last thing he ever saw of Luke.

Damn and blast. Using his frustration for momentum, Han stalked over to the bridge. So maybe he hadn’t handled this very well, none of it, but Luke’s accusation had hit him out of the left field. And if he didn’t hurry now, Luke was bound to vanish among the barges, stalls and antigrav racks that made up the bazaar.

On the far side, Han caught one fugitive glimpse of a black tunic before a barrage of pungent smells and jazzy colors engulfed him. Dyed fabrics flapped in the breeze on every side, witness to Imperial restrictions that imposed a single branch of industry on the denizens of each sector. As he paused to get his bearings, Han caught the spicy tang of acma-root. Next to the spread of sanctioned wares, a hodgepodge of groceries had surfaced, some definitely illegal. Shame he couldn’t spare a moment for closer inspection.

Access to the next terrace was blocked by a noisy, whooping throng. As he pushed to the front, Han spotted a Worren presenting a variety of trained creatures, the main attraction a Pakieri tree-rider hurtling through electric wire-loops. Neon-colored ribbons had been tied into its silver pelt, and each time germinal wings brushed the wire, sparks flared dramatically along the strands of fur and ribbon. The Worren stabbed at a remote to tighten the loops and speed up the simian’s performance ‘til its bounds grew near desperate.

Han grimaced at the sight that recalled Imperial segregation, degrading some sentient species to the level of animals, fit only to be slaves. Like Wookiees. He turned aside and froze in his tracks the next instant.

Luke stood watching the spectacle a few steps away, his face calm as snow. But inside another breath, the magnetic field that secured the Worren’s road show faltered. With a wild screech, the tree-rider swooped off, plunging towards a shadowed drop. Mutters and laughter drowned out the Worren’s curses, but Han’s attention was fixed elsewhere.

His head tilted back slightly, Luke wore the strangest expression, something unsteady and untame in his eyes. A feral kind of satisfaction.

Han shouldered past some lumbering Torteini youngsters as the crowd broke up, dispersing around Luke like airstreams over a hull. Maybe he’d used the Force to disable the magnetic field and liberate the tree-rider, or it could’ve been pure coincidence. No matter what, the look of him scored Han with a pang from the buried past. He breathed in tightly, the distance between them suddenly measured in heartbeats, not meters.

“Did you see that?” Luke met his approach with a level gaze.

“Sure did.” Han swallowed. Daylight glinted off the dangling loops and framed the moment in its passing. If he said nothing more, they’d just slip back into uneasy pretense.

“Look,” he started, “I never meant to shut you out, only took me a while―” But that was bending fact and feeling too far out of shape, so he changed tack. “Truth is, I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Luke tipped his head to one side. “I had no cause to snap at you. I just didn’t see it coming. And I’d expected that Command would be more... tolerant, at a time like this.” His shrug sketched a conditional apology. “I suppose I’m more impatient than I like to think.”

“You’ve got every reason to dislike being treated like some unreliable tag-along,” Han grumbled. “These types deal in nothing but black ‘n white, and they’re not about to thank you for yanking off their blinders.” And he should know, after all those years spent courting the wilder shades of gray. “But they’ll come around, soon as the dust settles round their overtaxed brains.”

Luke gave him a thin smile. “It goes beyond that. I’m failing their expectations.”

“So what?” Han flung both hands out. “Sod their expectations! What do _they_ know about being a Jedi, and all that? You’ll figure it out for yourself.”

“They have a right to expect certain things of me.” A pained look flashed at the back of Luke’s gaze and was gone again just as swiftly. “So do you.”

But he made it sound like an unwanted charge, one more turn of invisible pressure screws. Something went cold in Han’s gut. “Is that what you think?”

“Isn’t that why we’re here?” Luke asked back.

And his temper exploded out of nowhere. “Why, maybe the Emperor messed with your head more’n you know!” Han let it fly. “You should hear yourself, Luke. And just who d’you think I’d want you to be?”

Luke met his outburst with a long, unflinching look. “Someone,” he said slowly, “who doesn’t exist anymore.”

* * * * *

Somewhere along the way, he’d lost all his bearings. The hangar stretched before him like a runway to neverland. A single strip of lighting reflected in the middle of the flowstone floor, and Han listened to his own steps falling heavy and uneven into silence. How much longer?

Left and right, ships of every size huddled in darkling bays. Cargo-haulers and corvettes and one-man fighters, all lightless and carbon-scored, some so badly damaged they’d have to be gutted for spares. Weariness gripped him to the bone. What was he doing here anyway? Middle of the night, middle of the day, he couldn’t tell. Middle of madness seemed about right.

“I want out.” His own voice, hoarse and pressured, like a thing he no longer owned.

“You don’t mean that.”

He wheeled, and Luke was right before him, clear as a trick of the light. Luke in his old red flightsuit, a bruised look in his eyes. “Han, you can’t.”

A claim made true in a fraction, then Luke was in his arms ― and that was all, just the feel of Luke’s body against him, the closeness that lingered as it never had before, strobing warmth all over Han’s skin. Gentle hands slid up to his shoulders and held fast.

“All this time.” Luke raised his head, so much brightness in his eyes, it pierced to the heart. “I’ve been waiting―” His mouth just a breath away, and Han’s own breath caught.

_For what, kid?_

_For you. To find me_.

 

He woke up hard, sweat plastering the sheet to his chest, need lashed through him with a thousand troubled knots. Twitching, and pulling tighter. Han sent a curse up at the ceiling where thin fissures showed in a slant of minimal lighting. His breaths lengthened, but the ache in his groin refused to ease off.

After a brief struggle with better reason, Han reached down to pump himself with rough, mechanical strokes. Blanking his mind to the dream, to memory and all excess thinking. Until release swept him in short, wrenching spasms and left him hollow.

Flat on his back, he contemplated the likelihood of finding a suitable low-down dive, this side of the sector, where they’d serve Corellian brandy. He moved his tongue round his dry mouth and pictured himself getting drunk ― heedless all-out drunk ― ‘til he could barely crawl. General Solo, floored in the line of duty. Maybe some other time.

With a grudging nod to reversed priorities, Han took himself to the shower. Not far enough to escape thinking, but nothing short of a jump to hyperspace was bound to fix that. Moveless under the hot spray, he thought of Luke, of their silent ride back from the _Starway_. Tired of the tensions between them, of the draining days and the long trail of loss.

 _I want him back_.

A jaded chorus of _can’t always have what you want_ , performed by the sweet-faced Larisian singers he’d once heard on Kessel, mocked his querulous insistence. He’d thought they were rebuilding something, but perhaps Luke had just coddled that illusion to spare him another letdown. Or else he’d played along for lack of a higher purpose.

 _Not Luke_. Han scrubbed a hand through his wet hair. _Just ain’t like him_.

The dream had brought him back close, in all his startling candor, his clear-cut choices.

 _And that’s a comfort?_ Han scoffed, and began charting the dream’s cause and scope in spite of himself. Not a portent ― he should be so lucky to take heart from blithe superstition ― it was part wishful thinking, part message from some sensible region of his mind. Time, he thought, was the key factor. Mere weeks had passed since the battle of Endor, yet here he was, moping over should-have-beens, demanding that Luke should snap from his bout of post-war blues already.

And hadn’t he seen it happen enough times, after devastating battles? Minds buckling under terror, spirits crippled ‘til they slipped into sordid compromise, holed up in misery and addictions of every kind. Luke’s response was nothing like that. Wounded and shell-shocked out of himself, maybe, but not caving. No surrender from him. More like he’d just... put himself on hold somehow.

Perhaps, underneath that impassive front, he was putting himself back together, healing over slow stages. Perhaps he just needed the time to regroup. Han reached for the tap, turned off the water with a sharp twist. And if it was all he could give Luke, he’d give him that. Time.

* * *

A life in darkness. Luke came awake gasping, his fingers tight on the metal frame of his cot. His muscles fought a sense of going under, dragged down by lightless waters, and not a color remained in the world. Out of an ice-grey flood, he’d battled for a glimpse of the sun ‘til blinding black spots danced in his sight, but there was nothing ―

Luke sat up and knuckled his eyes, separating fact from vacant dreams. No direct sunlight ever touched these parts of Coruscant, and what remained of the day was already flagging towards a bleary dusk. He’d overslept, but when he’d returned from patrols in the morning, he’d barely had enough energy left to undress and drop across his cot.

Rubbing at a stiff shoulder, Luke rose and walked over to the small round window. He’d thought he’d adjusted well enough to the constant gloom that blurred the boundaries between day and night, but perhaps nineteen years of desert life were prompting his metabolism to revolt. Layers of fumes and dust, and a near-permanent cloud cover governed the sky above Coruscant. On Tatooine, clouds had been a rare event, a source of excitement and fascination.

The wall chrono allowed another half hour of leisure, and Luke pulled his muscles through a long, slow stretch before he settled into the posture for meditation. Once centered, he pressed past the teeming, swarming energies ― living minds and artificial sentience jumbled together in a sleepless bustle ― to thrust out into the deeper strata of pure Force. Progress was laborious, as it had been for weeks, a drudging crawl instead of flight. No matter how he stretched, his questing probes always seemed to percolate back to him, stale with warped reflections of his own mind and intent. Calm and at peace though he was.

Luke pressed his fingertips together, defining a focus for scattered energies. Perhaps the residue of curdled Darkness caused these distortions. By now he could trace its ragged outline around the Palace and the Jedi temple, glutted with the bitterness of cold grief and unrelieved anger. Lifeless, no longer channeled by active minds. Nothing at all like the vibrant shadow he’d sensed in the cave on Dagobah.

Reluctantly, he forced himself to consider the only alternative: that the source of trouble was located somewhere within his own mind.

On a deep breath, Luke bent his attention inward. Something shivered through him as he searched for traces of Palpatine’s presence, of corruption, that marred his link with the living Force. On the brink of death, he’d felt the Emperor’s withering touch, a branding imprint on his mind that prodded and pierced, angled towards his core ― yanked away at the last instant, blocked by his father’s shielding presence. Yet the tracks of that encounter had shrunk in the shape of thin scars, nothing more.

He flung himself deeper, rushing unhindered through familiar spaces of recollection and knowledge. Stark and unchanged, halls of attenuate echoes. Ready to withdraw, he opened his perceptions to a final sweep ― and slammed into searing cold.

Where the Force should have welcomed him with its clean, brilliant currents stretched a blank wall. No seams, and no limits. And yet... something stirred on the other side, shapeless and alien. Reaching. He flinched back from that phantom touch, a spasmodic movement that shattered his concentration.

Alone in the bare room, Luke pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them, dragging calm into himself with each rough breath, every lungful of recycled air. A chill lingered on his skin, but he supposed he’d found his answer at last. A damning truth.

Luke pushed to his feet as the chrono flipped to the full hour, glad for once to escape his retreat.

An outmoded, repulsor-operated lift took him to the topside landing pad where the Falcon sat beneath open sky. Shadows between her landing gear, Han and Chewie were throwing tools and leftovers from recent repairs into a metal crate, a cheerful exchange of percussive sounds.

“Be with you in a second.” Han straightened to dart him a cautious grin.

“Take your time.” His jacket tossed aside, Luke wrapped both hands around the lightsaber’s hilt. A tingling vibrancy seeped into him, building when the blade ignited. He balanced the ‘saber’s energy within his mind, against the discordant rush and jangle of other currents.

“Right, that’s it,” Han said somewhere on his left, his footsteps falling with determination across the weather-scarred syncrete, while Chewbacca lugged the crate up the Falcon’s ramp. A sullen rim of sundown hovered in the west, dappling bronze glints across Han’s hair and the side of his face as he crossed towards Luke. His sleeves rolled up and his work gloves tucked into his belt, bobbing slightly with the swing of his steps. A living distraction.

“Ready whenever you are,” Luke said, falling into battle stance.

Something flitted across Han’s face, softened and tightened the lines around his mouth in swift succession. “Yeah? Then let’s get to it.”

The blaster leaped into his fist, and Luke narrowed his mind to split-second flashes of insight, predicting angles and trajectories. His blade moved rapidly, parrying each shot with controlled exactness.

The routine they’d made of these sparring sessions had become a welcome relief, and a regular test of his progress. Teeth clenched in concentration, Luke pushed response and command through familiar resistance. Instead of flowing fast and liquid, the Force thickened around him like a glutinous substance. Nothing of it would show in the early stages of the exercise, but perspiration already started to dampen his face.

Ironic, when Han had regained his former balance in full. Every vestige of clumsy imbalance and slowed reflex shaken off, his economy of movement smooth and eloquent. He’d lost weight, too.

“Something wrong?” A hint of sweat glittered at Han’s temple.

Luke shook his head, his mouth set. He’d worked hard to counteract the continuous drag and couldn’t let himself think beyond that effort, not now.

In the lowering gloom overhead, craft of every size skimmed the sector’s regimented sky, their white runlights painting confused zigzags across the landing pad. Han’s feints and lunges came faster, loose energy gaining feral speed. Volleys of crimson streaked towards Luke in constantly changing patterns. Strain trembled in his arms as he whirled to deflect each shot and struggled to maintain his focus. Until a single bolt grazed his sleeve and swept numbing electricity up to his shoulder.

A muffled sound escaped him, surprise and denial. Sweat drenched the back of his tunic, and he felt more than saw Han’s rhythm falter in response. Raising the ‘saber high, Luke readied himself again. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Velvet heat curled deep within his senses, and he reached into it, drawing it up through his body with a violent twist. Something gave, rent open with a ripple that swept every muscle and nerve. Loosened him into whirlwind motion as everything bounced back into cutting focus.

Whipping needles of light caught in the swing of his blade and deflected at tightening angles. Splintered syncrete sprayed around Han, ricochets battered their angry brilliance across his face and torso, close enough to feel the heat ―

Until Han stumbled, fell back a step, and crashed to the ground.

Luke dropped the lightsaber with a gasp. Blinded by a glare from overhead, he rushed up to Han’s side, all the cold fire that had filled him instants before quenched in a twist of nausea. Crouching next to Han, he reached an unsteady hand to his shoulder.

“Hey, ’s all right.” Han’s chuckle reached him like the strangest thing, at odds with the chill that ran through him. “Nothing broken.”

“You’re sure?” Luke blinked, while realities realigned slowly.

“Don’t look so startled.” Han sat up and rubbed his elbow. “It’s not like I’m some unshakable monument, y’know.” Laughter sparked in his eyes, and more, clear as reflected sunlight.

“Never thought you were,” Luke answered with delay. As he straightened slowly, it seemed as if the space around him shifted, morphed into something more familiar again. Only when Han’s fingers closed firmly around his wrist did he realize that he’d reached a hand down to him.

He pulled Han to his feet with more force than needed, and it brought them chest to chest, locked for a moment between relief and renewed tension. Something flashed through the contact, in Han’s glance, and swept a fine heat all over Luke’s skin.

Touch probed into him, a toxic sting in the nerve that ran out in tremors. Luke pulled away fast, covering unease as he retrieved his lightsaber. Beyond the edge of the landing pad, nightfall sapped all color from the cityscape. Yet white lights swerved again, almost on top of him, and his mind burned with a strange hum as he understood, too late, what he’d done.

He’d felt this tainting rush before, pushing through his veins like a sudden fever. _Quick, easy, more seductive_... Nothing but a chink in his perfected defenses had tripped his anger—and from anger, Darkness.

“Luke, what is it?”

Han’s question merged through the harsh throb of his own pulse. He tried a shake of the head when a hand clasped his shoulder. Only blind luck had saved Han from severe injury, or worse. A piercing frost pooled in Luke’s stomach.

“Luke, talk to me.” Low and intimate, Han’s voice brushed the back of his neck.

The blinding runlights veered off with a judder across the syncrete. Luke drew a rapid breath. “I’m sorry. I think I... overdid it just now.”

“No problem. Happens to all of us.” Something strained Han’s casual tone, but alarm had no part in it, and his hand tightened briefly on Luke’s shoulder.

Luke stilled with an effort. Against the length of his back, he could feel Han’s body heat, and woven through it, a supple vibrancy, the loose power of... wanting. Reaching towards him, enveloping his senses with bright, familiar warmth that lasted only for a breath. With a rough start, Han released him, ready to retreat.

Luke swung back, the impulse faster than conscious decision, and met Han’s eyes in the deepening twilight. Whatever he might have offered — another apology, a warning, some effort to explain? — an electronic whistle jarred it from mind.

With a scowl, Han flipped up his comlink to take the call. Tinny fragments filtered from the speaker and skittered past Luke without consequence.

“Right... yeah, I’ll check at the com center. Give me a minute.” Han hooked the comlink back to his belt. “Another orbital surveillance report coming through. I’ll be right back.”

Before Luke could reply, he jogged off towards the lift. Battle preparations were moving along at a hectic pace; there’d be no chance to spar again before the offensive was launched. And perhaps that was for the best. Luke ran his fingers across his lightsaber, retrieving a modicum of calm when he felt the prod of distant attention.

Silhouetted against the Falcon’s lit hatch, Chewbacca was studying him. Perhaps he’d watched all along. A furred hand gestured, waved him over with casual authority.

He hadn’t boarded the Falcon in a long time. Not since ―

The blend of familiar scents rushed over him as he passed the hatch. Braced against the tug of memory, Luke raised his eyes to Chewbacca’s face and the shadow that lingered there. It shouldn’t surprise him either. Always a perceptive observer, Chewie couldn’t have failed to notice how the simple sparring match had almost tripped over the edge of hazard.

“I didn’t...” Luke cleared his throat. “I could never hurt him. You know that.”

The massive head shook slowly, though not in disbelief. A bass note of sorrow crept into Chewie’s voice when he growled a question, the sound resonating strangely within Luke’s chest.

“Healed?” he echoed. “I don’t think that’s... an issue while there’s still a war going on.”

And beyond taking the Palace, beyond the coming battles for each world or star system still shackled to Imperial rule, there was his duty to restore Jedi tradition from scattered, mangled wreckage. The one path laid out for him that might grant a sense of fullfilment.

A large hand landed on his shoulder, insistent as the warning that rumbled through the broad chest.

“I don’t understand.” Luke searched the deep-set eyes. “What kind of... smell?”

The Wookiee language embraced countless distinctions between smells, from scents that characterized organic essence to the flavor of emotional states in sentient beings. But Chewbacca’s description ranged past the tangible, reaching for a crucial state of being.

It didn’t translate into Basic, but a memory pushed back into Luke’s mind. The decayed tree on Dagobah sheltering the cave, the cold stench of rot and... unrelieved hunger.

“Is it me?” The question rushed from him, hovered uncertain amid whiffs of coolant, engine oil and stale kaffin from the lounge.

Another shake of the head, vigorous with a stirring of anger that wasn’t directed at him. Chewbacca’s brief _rrho’awrr_ sounded a clear _watch yourself_.

“I will,” Luke answered. “I should know.”

Yet neither experience nor control had stopped him from slipping into fevered, seductive abandon, mere minutes before. Another vicious chill gathered at the bottom of his spine.

Chewie’s tone had changed completely when he slung a long arm around Luke’s shoulders and tipped his head down the corridor. Nudging him from a snarl of unfinished thoughts with a very ordinary request that sank in bit by bit.

“Sure. I can help out.” Luke breathed deeply, acknowledging the implicit offer with something like a smile. “What d’you need?”

A few minutes later, he was working in the maintenance pit next to Chewie who’d straddled a coolant pipe, wrenching at a stubborn clamp with both hands.

Recollection reared again with greater momentum, restoring ship’s night on the trip to Alderaan, and Luke didn’t try to resist this time.

Voices bouncing off the bulkhead and instrument panels ― his own voice and Han’s, wary at first and gradually easing ― plucking unused strings within him, until an image sharpened to startling crispness. A shrewd, calculating look in Han’s eyes, overtaken by tacit amusement. The lines of his face surprisingly soft, in clear conflict with the mercenary pose. Close enough to touch.

Abruptly, Luke wished he could turn around and look at himself, his younger presence like an impatient ghost at his shoulder.

Across a distance, sounds intruded, undefined in the structured chaos of pipes and conduits. When he craned his neck, Han had stalked up to the rim of the pit.

“I see we’ve got a new mechanic.” Han folded his arms ― then he threw his head back and laughed, the sound spilling down around Luke, rich and free and incomprehensible. “Welcome aboard.”

* * * * *

It had been an easy choice to make. Someone had to lead the ground forces, but it needn’t be Han Solo, whose dubious qualifications for the rank of a general owed nothing to command experience anyway. And since the past weeks’ assignments dictated that Luke would guide the spearhead of scouts and Intell agents through the undercity, Han took gleeful advantage of the rank’s boons and appointed himself to the same team.

Soggy afternoon was flagging towards dusk when they set out, twelve groups of fifteen commandos each, who’d operate on different levels. The tricky job of dribbling the miracle concoction into the Palace water supplies had been wrapped up by Intell’s finest an hour ago. According to the lab wizards, the poison they’d mixed would bring on fevers and twist stomachs, simulating bacterial infection to avoid raising alarm too soon. Still, the drug was supposed to kick in fast, and once the loyalists started counting their losses, they’d get a line on the sewer-smells too.

Han adjusted his blaster and checked the charge paks one last time before stepping out into the cozy old murk. Distant like a fantasy, he could hear the wail of a revved engine, and his thoughts leaped to the Falcon in a heartbeat. Chewie would join the party up in the air, playing backup for the fighter squads. He’d acknowledged Han’s choice of assignment with suspicious satisfaction, like he’d just won a bet with himself, and of course he’d be fine. Han had made sure to collar a pair of ace gunners who’d man the Falcon’s batteries.

 _No heroics, Chewie ― right?_ His irreverent Wookiee partner had had the nerve to chortle at him.

Dank air closed around them as they filed into the gloom. Fifty levels below daylight, fogs lolled in every cranny and writhed around the struts that carried an ancient walkway overhead. Well, reduced visibility could work to their advantage, Han reasoned with a sweep of senseless discomfort. While Luke walked in front, he brought up the rear for the time being.

In a few more hours ― sooner, if Command picked up any hint of trouble in the Palace area ― all this goddamn snooping around would stop. For good, if he could make his vote count. The game plan was to keep the cannons blazing at every front until something gave.

In theory, the Palace could be defended until the sludge food-synths digested into regular meals finally ran out. Which might take as long as several months. There was no way they could produce quantities of the drug that’d last more than a few days, hardly long enough to affect the entire Palace population. But, with some scrap of luck, the right people would be hugging sinks at the wrong time. Even a minor panic could open the chink they were waiting for.

Clammy vapors collected inside Han’s collar, and he sucked in a long breath. Too much adrenaline spilling into his bloodstream already, a pure waste of energy. Through the drifting fogs, he could barely make out the pale splodge of Luke’s hair, and all sounds were muted in the moisture-ridden air. At regular intervals, the rasp of short-range radio filtered through, cryptic bursts that confirmed the other groups’ steady advance above and below.

As soon as they’d crossed the vague line demarcating the government precinct, that reassuring sound fell away into requisite radio silence. Han listened into the scattered rhythms of odd, distorted noises, casting about for anything out of the ordinary... though ordinary took on a whole new flavor in the undercity.

With their foray into enemy terrain, the team huddled tighter together, securing passages with drawn blasters, a snap in their movements that betrayed a simmer of alarm, but no threats jumped out of the woodwork. Several times, they stirred up a flock of leather-winged creatures that resembled mynocks except for size and coloring, and they probably gnawed on syncrete instead of plastic.

Han checked his wrist compass as they crept through a cracked pipe. Only another half-mile to go, not counting potential detours. He froze automatically when a dim clatter of footfalls trickled down to their level. Imperial patrol... but too far out of range to mean trouble.

The sound of marching stormtroopers punctured their progress a few more times and hiked up the tension levels, though there was never any real danger of discovery. Still, when the Palace foundations finally loomed into view, slabs of polished cinder between skeletal girders, Han wiped a trickle of sweat off his neck and inched up to Luke’s side.

“This is it, huh? Deploy the charges?” He’d lowered his voice to a near-whisper, but in the sodden silence, every sound seemed to hover like suspended weight.

Luke answered with a terse nod, his eyes sliding along the sheer black wall, tension fairly blazing from him. No telling if something more alive than memory stormed him, this close to Palpatine’s testament of power.

They’d reached a spot near the south end of the Palace, and when they walked around the massive bulwark, a long row of arches stretched before them. Blind doorways framed by ribbed pillars, and the apex of each decorated with monstrosities that flaunted fangs and bulging eyes. Why Palpatine had wanted ornaments this far down was beyond guessing. Still, there were two exits hidden behind the parapet above. The signatures of high-powered shields spiked brazenly across their scanners.

Han glanced back across the troops. Hardly enough to stop an avalanche of bailing Imperials, if it came to that, but then the undercity didn’t invite open battle anyway. With the combat grenades and ammo they carried, they could cause a major holdup until reinforcements arrived.

The group fanned out to deposit the charges in strategic locations. Han had just activated his remote when the first round of blasterfire tore loose high above and lashed straight into his bloodstream. All their heads jerked up automatically, a split second’s inertia seizing them before they lunged for cover in every available recess.

Crouching beside Luke behind a steel pylon, Han craned his neck for a glimpse at the fireworks, white and crimson splinters on the very edge of vision.

“Show’s underway,” he muttered. “’Least we won’t have to wait all that long.”

“That depends,” Luke answered softly. “We might not see any action at all.”

But his hand rested on his lightsaber, and some grating sensation in Han’s gut claimed they weren’t going to bivouac here like a bunch of errant tourists.

“Yeah, maybe.” His shoulder brushed Luke’s as he leaned back, and he half-expected some reaction ― some kind of flinch maybe, or the frozen rigor that’d set in when he’d last touched Luke ― but nothing stirred through his resolve this time.

The commando on their right had climbed into a nest of pipelines that gave him a view of the camouflaged doors. Somewhere high up, the noise intensified, and at one point, something heavy crashed through the precarious webwork of pipes and walkways not too far off. TIE fighter, it had to be. Perhaps the Imperials had flung their reserve squads into the fray.

 _Give ‘em hell, Chewie!_ Han fingered the butt of his blaster like he could conjure a fight by sympathetic magic. Every minute down here dragged with a vengeance, rolling along with the steams that kept them company. Flak coughed on the upper levels, countered by the rumble of heavy artillery. Ground troops moving in...

Anticipation jerked into combat mode when Han caught a movement from the corner of his eye. The man on their right ripped a hand up, concomitant with the faint buzz of an activating lock. A split second after Luke, Han leaped to his feet, ducking against the pylon that wasn’t big enough to cover them both. Behind the parapet, codelocks unsealed, and the door rumbled open to release ―

Not a stampede, not yet. Regimented footfalls pounded along the rampart, in concert with bobbing scraps of white armor. Stormtroopers. Probably escorting some fickle functionary to presumed safety. Han raised his blaster to eye level. They had every route covered from here, no matter if these brave soldiers chose the adjacent walkway or the stairs. _Take the walkway, why don’t you?_ Han spared a warm thought for the detonators attached to its supports.

By force of habit, he tossed a look over his shoulder, at the colonnades standing in strict silence. Yet something arrested his glance. Something minor and unthreatening.

Inside one of the dead arches, a shadow had thickened. Odd.

Beside him, Luke stepped forward, though he faced the other way, ready to give the starting signal for the pyrotechnics. Han squinted backward, trying to get a lock on those sudden misgivings. Underneath that one arch, cinder yielded into a crack of absolute blackness... then scarlet.

A mere flash, but more than enough to jolt Han from puzzlement. He lurched towards the hidden door, already firing.

At his back, the first detonator went off, tearing steel into screaming shrapnel. Before him, scarlet robes fluttered in the twilight, but his shots missed their mark. Horizontal before his chest, the Palace guard held a pike that seemed to draw Han’s shots and... absorb them. He twirled it, pointed it ―

― at a target somewhere behind Han.

“Luke!” he shouted against the din, hurtling himself into the line of fire.

With a hiss, bright blue ribbons of energy exploded from the tip of the pike. Han twisted aside, not fast enough, cold fire impacting hard with his left side while his finger pushed the trigger one more time. Black stone swung out towards him.

Impact screwed with his vision, crossed lines and angles into a canted maze and slowed time to a crawl. Crackle of a lightsaber, and a yell that didn’t unravel into words. Crimson sleeve billowing like a sail. Slow, slow motion, slowing down ―

Dimming into scorched blackness that raced up his spine and shut him down to the sound of a lethal hiss.

* * *

Gray streaks filtered out of nowhere and slanted across the knuckles of his right hand. Lit on a stretch of white sheet. Han squeezed his eyes shut a moment to bring the rest of the room into focus. Low ceiling, angles of something metallic in the shadow, possibly a locker, nubby leather of a padded chair. Not sickbay, and not what he expected from the afterlife either.

He issued a command for movement, but his fingers barely twitched. Didn’t seem worth the effort anyway. Adrift, he tried to pluck a random detail from the fuzz at the back of his head.

...scarlet splash that had no right to be there, whirling forward...

A wanton neural impulse yanked at him.

“Easy, Han, it’s okay.”

Luke’s voice, followed by a touch against his good shoulder that shocked him with blazing relief. Memory caught on in fits and starts.

“He... didn’t get you,” Han croaked, though it came out barely recognizable.

Luke’s hand slipped under his neck, and the cool rim of a cup rose to his mouth. Each sip took Han’s entire concentration, but the water slid soothingly down his throat. Next, he’d try and retrieve some muscle control. In a week or so.

“You’ll be all right,” Luke said, his face a pale blur for the time being. “Just don’t try to get up yet.”

Han knew better than to shake his head and tried anyway. After several deep breaths, the room steadied again, and his vision cleared. Enough to recognize the concern on Luke’s face. “What... happened?”

“Your shoulder and side – the medics had to cut off your clothes before treating the burns.” Luke made an impatient gesture, as if he’d already said too much. “The narcotics should wear off soon, but you still need rest. You hit your head when you fell.”

Right on cue, Han felt a dull throb above and behind his right ear. Against his shoulder and down his ribcage, he traced the pressure of bandages and oozing bacta packs.

“You’re probably concussed,” Luke warned.

His hand moved sluggishly through his hair and traced a massive lump. What a hero. “’Least they can’t... hang another medal on me f’r this...”

“I wouldn’t count on that.” A slim smile formed on Luke’s mouth. The real thing this time, not a pretense. Han could tell by the way his expression flatlined again in a heartbeat.

“What... is this place?”

Behind Luke, on a shelf, sat a metallic case that had to be a medikit.

“Somebody’s apartment... probably a minor functionary who bailed out before the shooting began.” Luke settled into the leather chair. Soot and dust stained his clothes. “Your injuries weren’t life-threatening, and there were... many casualties.”

 _So you got appointed as my personal nurse?_ Sure he’d still find that unlikely in a less addled state, Han turned his head. “What about―?”

“It’s over, don’t worry.” Luke sat forward and shared the news in a lowered voice. “We’ve won.”

Just like that. Han looked at the slant of daylight that trapped Luke’s fingers on the chair’s arm and wondered how long he’d been out of it. “Hear anything... from Chewie?”

“He’s fine. Still busy shuttling personnel and supplies back and forth, but he’ll be around as soon as he can.”

With that comforting bit of news, thought and awareness wanted to beg out again, but Han made an effort to keep both together a little while longer. “That... guard. He was comin’ for you.”

“He could feel my presence,” Luke answered, instant stillness falling over his features.

“You mean, he―” Han fluttered his fingers to supplement the rest of the question.

“Was he Force-sensitive?” Luke guessed accurately. “I don’t think so. At least not in the way that I am. But perhaps... perhaps serving the Emperor schooled his perceptions.”

Not a pleasant topic at the best of times. Han managed a short motion to indicate a nod. “Never seen a... weapon like that.”

“I have,” Luke said quietly. “On the Death Star. They’re deadly. I wouldn’t have been able to deflect _that_ kind of fire.” His fingers curled on the chair’s armrest in small, fretful movements. “If you hadn’t spotted him―”

“Luck,” Han cut in.

Luke shook his head. “Instinct.”

And then, abruptly, his hand swept across, settling on top of Han’s where it rested on his lower chest. Warmth sinking in with gentle pressure that found the strangest echo in Han’s throat. He couldn’t say a thing.

“Relax, Han.” Luke settled back in the chair without letting go. “There’s nothing to worry about now.”

He looked at their joined hands, diffuse grayness melting over outlines and shadows, until another wash of fatigue closed his eyes.

 

Han’s slow, restful breaths filled the room, a deep rhythm that stole over him, minute by minute. Until it timed his own breaths. Sleep brought a looseness to Han’s face that compared to none of his memories yet prodded them all to mind, where they unrolled in a slow, unstoppable parade. So many of them.

Hours went by like this, the seeping daylight changing angle and intensity, until late afternoon lined the pillow and Han’s unbandaged shoulder.

Luke closed his eyes and swallowed, his throat dry, but it made no difference to the sting and burn that kept haunting him. Ever since he’d heard Han shout his name. When naked fear had prodded something out of hiding. And even now, he knew of no way to stop it.

His clothes felt sticky against his skin, rank with undercity smells and his own sweat. With another glance at Han, Luke pushed to his feet and gave himself fifteen minutes for a shower.

Drab as the apartment was, much opulence had been lavished on the ‘fresher. Pinpoint lighting lanced back and forth between high-tech appliances and framed mirrors. Luke tossed his clothes in the cleaner and set it for a quick spin. In the shower, water came in a tepid burst, too much pressure washing a trickle of rust into the basin. The temperature remained the same, no matter which tap he tried.

Behind the curtain of rushing water, Luke smoothed his palms down his chest and abdomen and felt his skin grow warmer than the water as if he’d contracted a fever, strange under his own hands.

He stepped out, the cleaner still whirring in the background, and pulled a towel from the chrome dispenser. A sumptuous mirror framed his own image, above a clutter of flacons and fine porcelain. Water dripped into his eyes, and he looked at himself through cool, impervious glass. Drained and diminished at this distance from himself.

 _Release me_. A hot, alien surge washed through him, and his right hand rose, sweeping through the fragile array of bottles and vials, hurtling all the precious glassware to the floor. A concert of tinkling, splintering sounds chimed between tiled walls.

Before his feet, a curved blue shard rocked back and forth on glossy white, and he stared at it, hypnotized with recognition. _I let myself fall. Like this_.

 

A distant crash jarred at Han’s consciousness, halfway to waking. Alarm wound through the fogs in his head, but it took obnoxiously long to figure out the where and how. Didn’t help either, that his left shoulder was itching like hell underneath those sticky dressings. At least the wooziness was finally on the retreat. Han pushed up on his other elbow and dragged the covers off himself ― just as Luke appeared in the doorway, dressed only in his pants.

Han paused to study him, the way his left hand encircled the right wrist. “What’s going on?”

“I broke something.” Luke approached the bed slowly.

“You’re bleeding,” Han said. 

“It’s only a small cut.”

And it was, a thin dark line drawn askance from the heel of Luke’s right hand down to his wrist. As if he’d slammed it into something.

Without thought, Han reached out to slide his thumb across the cut and caught the hand in both of his own when Luke started to pull away. The notion that it couldn’t be dried blood staining Luke’s hand — not _that_ hand — slithered across Han’s mind and didn’t change a thing.

“Han, please...” A tremor washed up under Luke’s skin, like a seismic warning.

“C’mon, sit down,” Han said roughly, giving his hand a little tug. Something was coming unraveled and pulled tight in the pit of his stomach. No questions now. “About time those dressings came off, don’t you think?” he added, reaching for a casual tone. “I’m itching like crazy.”

With a quick nod, Luke lowered himself on the edge of the mattress. Han kept himself still when his fingers started peeling at the clingstrips that held the bacta packs in place, but he couldn’t keep his glance from making a swift pass across Luke’s torso, the smooth definition of muscles accented by threads of waning daylight.

Still tender, the freshly regenerated skin magnified each sensation, broadcasting the warmth of Luke’s touch all the way to his backbone.

“You’re healing well.” Luke pulled off the final strips that hugged Han’s lower ribs, and his fingertips drew a short trail of goosebumps. A delicious chill crawled up Han’s spine.

“Can’t complain.” Exasperated by the thickness in his voice and the sudden speeding of his pulse, he mustered a lopsided grin. “Oh, and thanks.”

“How d’you feel?” A question that any medic or nurse might ask, but Luke’s eyes rested on him with a more personal brand of attention.

“I feel...” Han blew out the breath he’d been holding, ridiculously, and kept his eyes locked to that direct gaze. “Glad to be here, odd as that’s gonna sound.”

Double meaning found its target and turned Luke’s glance away, a confused start of reaction passing through it.

“Why did you do that?” Luke asked abruptly, his hand falling to his side.

“Do what?”

“You could’ve been killed!” Savage impulse drove out the words and brought Luke’s eyes back to him, charged with implicit accusation.

“’Cause I was clumsier than usual.” But Han could tell that flip replies wouldn’t ease anything, not anymore. “We’ve both been doin’ that kind of thing for years,” he said with a shrug. “And I still owe you one.”

“I didn’t ask―”

“Luke,” Han stopped him gruffly, “it don’t matter if you ask for it or not. Like you said, it’s instinct.”

“I don’t...” Luke trailed off with a short motion.

 _Understand?_ Han wondered ― and if Luke had strayed this far off track, it would take a whole new language to reach him at all.

“I can’t accept that.”

“Not your choice,” Han returned brusquely. “Matter of fact, I don’t like it either when you’re takin’ shots meant for me.”

Luke’s glance cut sideways at the vertical slats that curtained the window. “Sometimes it’s as if I’ve... forgotten so much.”

Now _that_ statement finally made sense, but Han’s mind tripped over a sweep of unexpected sensation. Luke had raised his hand again to touch the healed tissue at his side, and his fingers made a halting journey across Han’s ribs.

“Luke...” His heart in his mouth, goddamnit, thudding out of rhythm.

“You want me.” A short pause, as if to acknowledge this breach of privacy. “Han ― it’s not that I’d pry, it’s just... so clear to me, like a heat source in a room.” Surprise and confusion laced Luke’s voice, and he kept his glance lowered, measuring the progress of his fingers.

“Kinda difficult to hide, I guess,” Han muttered, while more than the touch struck home.

For the longest time, he’d kept waiting to see Luke emerge from something close to hibernation and snap back into his former self. But over the past weeks, countless little changes had added up, and the waiting had come unhitched from its clear target. When he looked at Luke now, he could almost watch something stir into different shape, behind a close screen like a chrysalis. Nowhere near complete, but moving.

“So.” Han drew a short breath. “Does that bother you?”

Luke withdrew his hand and sat back, the set of his shoulders defensive. “I can’t let anything ― anyone ― have this kind of hold over me. It’s just not possible.”

“Who says that _that’s_ what it’s all about?” Han countered in reflex, but the words scored deep, his own creed flung back at him like a missile packing all the reasons why he’d pulled back on Ord Mantell. On Hoth.

“Then... what?”

“Whatever we’re gonna make of it, kid.” And that old nickname slipped out for the first time since Endor, loaded with past intimacy, with the need to salvage something essential.

Their eyes met across the short distance, caught in a fleeting, precarious balance.

 _Now_. Not so much thought as a pitch of hard pulse rocked Han into motion. He raised a hand to Luke’s face, drifting a slow caress down the side, charting each point of contact, each reaction. The slanting muscle in Luke’s cheek, the slight roughness that marked the line of his jaw. Han cupped his palm around it, captured a faint resonance of pulse at the top of Luke’s throat.

“Anything,” he added, without a clear notion what that meant.

Luke bowed his head, and his hand closed around Han’s forearm, his grip tight with a need to touch or control, or both. Han swallowed sharply. Brittle as glass, the moment probed at him, testing boundaries he’d never traced before. A taut shiver toppled the balance.

Luke moved with ferocious suddenness, a wild impulse ripped from him that knocked Han back on the bed, stretched out flat under the weight of Luke’s body. His breath driven out in a rush when hard muscle and tendon pressed into him, when Luke caught his wrists and pinioned them with uncompromising strength.

“Sure about that?” Luke murmured, his voice low and rough. The glitter in his eyes reflecting some smoke-clouded blaze.

He shifted his weight, his thighs aligned with Han’s, pressing a statement of command into him with full muscular force. His hips rocked forward, pushing heat into Han’s groin that arrowed up his spine and arched his back. Han trapped a gasp behind his teeth, raw want winding up tight in the hollow between his hipbones. Blood and pulse surged into his cock with wanton urgency.

“Luke―”

A curt shake of the head stopped half-formed thoughts in their broken track. Another wash of sensation pushed up through Han’s body, outblazing conscious mind with a quick thrill. Luke’s thigh opened his legs, and he tilted his hips into a braced, demanding rhythm. Trapped in a hard grip, underneath that steeled, slender frame, unrelieved pressure was about to collect its dues.

Instinct flashed through Han’s gut and clamored for instant reaction. Flip Luke over on his back, have him and have it out, on a fast track to release. And perhaps that was exactly the response Luke wanted to provoke. Perhaps he’d even offer himself to pay off old debts.

Han found a breath, his voice, grating against disbelief. “Luke, wait ― stop.” His own gasp interrupted him. “Not like this.”

The moment Luke released his wrists, he was ready for the flight reflex, and his arms caught in momentary deadlock around Luke’s back. Sheltered the mounting tension that narrowed his time limit down to mere seconds.

“You don’t have to control me,” Han blurted ― no goddamn clue what to say or what was going on behind that shuttered look ― but he plowed on anyway, like the past weeks had all built up to this moment. “And you don’t have to take anything from me, not when I’d give you...”

Was he getting through at all? Blue eyes drifted across his face, searching for some kind of truth or anchor with near-desperate intensity. Han loosened his grip to glide a hand up Luke’s spine. “It’s me, Luke,” he murmured. “Just me. And this’s no power game. We don’t need that. Trust me. You used to, you know.”

Without warning, tension drained from Luke’s muscles, and his head sagged against Han’s chest. A soft, broken sound buried there, committed to bare skin with fugitive, precious warmth. Sounding him out through a fast echo that kicked up under Han’s breastbone.

He cradled Luke gently, struggling hard with the feeling that wrenched through him, all too familiar, and a scalding heat rode on his breath, seized up in his throat. Like a predictable storm front, it hauled him dead center into the moment when he’d kissed Luke that first time. When Luke had kissed him back like the end of the world was kicking down the door. _Can’t all be gone, just can’t_.

“I’m not whole anymore,” Luke’s voice reached him, a shiver against his skin. “You can’t change that.”

“Never said I was your savior.” Han swallowed against the damnable thickness in his throat. All he wanted was keep Luke with him, for now ― “And I don’t wanna change _you_ , either.”

Luke’s hair brushed his chest, trailing an accidental caress up his shoulder as he rolled to the side. “All of this is hollow... empty.”

But his voice wasn’t, it carried the mark of some longterm inner fight, and it pulled on Han like gravity turned inside out.

“No it’s not,” he said, because he’d be hanged before he let himself doubt that. “It’s not.” He slung his arm across Luke’s shoulders, gathered him back close, and their eyes met through a veil of sinking twilight.

This was Luke as he hadn’t seen him since before the carbon freeze — vulnerable, at a loss, yet still ready to put up a fight — and it tightened Han’s gut with alarm and relief at the same time.

“How would I know?” Luke’s mouth twitched with self-derision.

“Bet you will.” Han made it a challenge flung in the face of unpromising odds, though it felt like going under. The brief spell of daylight had blanched into a soft gray that glistened on Luke’s hair and shoulder. He lifted Luke’s face to him without moving any closer, their breaths mingling in the short space between their mouths. “You’ll know the difference.”

“Han, I ― I’ve no―” Luke broke off and his eyes closed beneath knitting brows. Leashed pains breaking the surface, but his voice steadier when a single word followed. “Yes.”

The motion came from both of them, lips meeting for a mere brush, electric in the aftermath, then closing in again to cling together. Han let his mouth move gently against Luke’s, tracing shape and texture without hurry. A quiver of response curved Luke’s lips, parting into a close fit that loosened a gasp in Han’s throat. His hand tightened around Luke’s neck as he pressed back ― their mouths open to each other in a joint intake of breath ― and a small shockpulse scurried through him, hot and bright like freedom.

He poured everything into that kiss ― every day, every hour, every minute of waiting, all the time they hadn’t had on Hoth ― because some kind of limit had just broken down inside him. Couldn’t afford to think while Luke’s hand moved in small circles across his back, while he searched the warm mouth for all the subtle shadings of taste, a slow, unstoppable advance.

Wrapped around each other, they finally broke for air. Han rubbed his cheek against Luke’s hair, and a smile sprang up at the tight hold Luke kept on him.

“See?” he murmured, more confused about it all than Luke seemed at that moment.

“I wish...”

The hoarse, throaty sound of Luke’s voice made up for all the uncertainty that still hovered behind it. Offered him a chance, a place to start, his hands tracing shivers across Luke’s skin.

Change had settled over his body too, left its tracks in the hardened slant of muscles, the cleared angles of bone that stretched the skin ― but beyond that, Han couldn’t compare. All he could draw on was the balance and the rhythm that’d patterned their sparring sessions, the fluid complexity of body language and favored maneuvers. The speed at which muscles pulled tight with effort, like armor, with a constant need to protect some invisible center.

He smoothed his palm across Luke’s chest, a slow ride down the tautened ribcage to the softer slope below, and ignored the hammering of his own pulse. Goddamnit, but he wanted this, he’d waited long enough, and now ―

Not a clue, only the need to break Luke out of his silence. Somehow. Luke’s breathing was high and shallow, his mouth pulled tight. Starved for touch, and still holding it all in. A hard tremor in those tense muscles, like he was fighting himself the whole time.

“Easy,” Han murmured. If only it could be.

Leaning over, he traced the damp skin of Luke’s inner arm with his mouth until he’d reached the crook where a vein pulsed clearly, like waterflow under a dry river bed.

A hand stole into his hair, curved hesitantly around the back of his head, and he could feel every touch sink into him, like marks on a sketchy map. Luke’s fingers tracked the bumps of his spine, swept sideways to his shoulder blade and dipped under its angle. Han blew a hum against the hollow of Luke’s arm, his shoulders arched into that questing caress.

A response stirred in Luke’s chest, near soundless, but the quick hitch of breath moved hard against Han’s side. When his palm covered a nipple, Luke pressed up, and he kept his touch light, circling a shiver that tightened sensitive skin. His lips at Luke wrist, where neural impulse fed into micro-components, without seam or transition. A soft moan unlocked by his touch, released into motion. Luke tugged at him, and Han moved back up, into a dense twilight that left only silver-gray outlines.

When he met Luke’s eyes, his chest went tight with a scalding kind of tenderness he’d never allowed anywhere near his bed, or his heart. Same as on Hoth, just deeper here, the rough pull on his stomach like a sense of falling, but he wouldn’t back off this time. Side by side, their mouths angled to fit, every touch falling slow and deliberate, tripping over erratic pulse. So easy to lose himself to the yielding gentleness of Luke’s mouth, the strength of his grip. But maybe none of this went any further than skin-deep.

“What’re you doin’ to yourself?” Words dropped into the hollow of Luke’s throat while his fingers played over heated skin, dissolving tension over slow inches. He didn’t expect an answer, but a tremor hurried down the plane of Luke’s stomach, and he placed his hand there, circling warmth against phantom cold.

Pleasure moved through Luke’s body in a tight rhythm, wound them closer together, into random contacts between hip and thigh. Racing heartbeats battered his ribs like distant thunder. Gripped by the same breathless excitement, Han kept his eyes open, like he’d lose direction otherwise. To see the guarded reserve slip off Luke’s face and desire ease through, while the dimness made him a study in shadow and faint silver. Beautiful, in a way that burned on his own skin.

He dived again to take Luke’s mouth, teasing and exploring, and Luke’s stifled gasps turned pleasure into a strange new element. Han could feel every breath reach deep through his body, lashed to a static charge without direction. His thumb drifted over Luke’s cheek, trailing the movement of Luke’s mouth under his own. Unpredictable, every touch skimming an edge of unknown risk.

He held his breath when Luke’s fingers roamed across his chest, ruffled the dark fuzz at its center, slowly starting to learn him ― and that was part of it, part of the difference these moments might make. His mouth and hands searching to stir some part of Luke awake again. Alive, out of that strange frost.

A coiled ache settled deep in Han’s groin, each sensation a grappling hook that seared icy like a midwinter sun. Luke was pressed close against him, moaning into his mouth, and when he finally reached down, gripping the hard edge of a hipbone to pull Luke to him, a shudder ran through the lean frame. His mouth buried at Luke’s shoulder, Han pushed against him, opened Luke’s thighs with his own and cupped his hand over the hardened sex. Anticipation trailed a shiver up his back. Even through the cloth of Luke’s pants, he felt the quick throbs, the jolt of response to his touch. He peeled pants and underwear aside, tracing his fingers across the hard length, in time with the flow of blood that pulsed back fast and strained. It took no more than that.

His head tossed back, seized up in a savage shudder that wrenched at every muscle and tore out a choked sound, Luke pushed into his touch, his whole body rigid. Han’s fingers curled tighter around him. _He’s taking this so hard_...

Then a fierce wash passed across Luke’s face and shook Han with a short cry, a heart-pounding surge.

“Luke...” His breath caught when Luke gripped him in a tight embrace. “’S all right, kid, I’m here, I’ve got you,” he murmured against Luke’s hair, hollow sounds above the wild heartbeats that echoed Luke’s pulse, as close to undone as he’d ever been.

He cradled Luke, needing that hold for himself, taking shelter with the gradual ebb of ragged breathing. Strangely shaken, for all that heated demands kept throbbing in his groin. The feeling that took him over spun out of control, and where they’d take it from here, he couldn’t begin to guess.

Only a few moments later, a knock on the outer door snapped through the room. Protest raced through Han’s gut like a curse as artificial lighting flared up.

Luke was out of bed in an instant, rearranging his clothes with a vigilant glance that passed over Han and targeted the presence outside. With delay, Han wiped his hand on the sheet and pulled it up to cover the most visible evidence of his arousal.

A resonant growl reached him before Chewie loomed into sight, a glitter in his eyes. Flushed and dazed, still catching his breath, Han offered a shrug in return. ‘Course the Wook knew exactly what they’d been up to, and beyond the things he was saying, his tone signaled a smug kind of approval.

“Yeah, I’m fine now,” Han answered the solicitous barks, presenting his mended shoulder and side. “Just needed a little rest... ‘n how are you?”

The series of guttural growls and rumbles translated as _overworked but perky_ , the latter all too evident in the contentment Chewbacca exuded. Dumping a set of fresh clothes, he reached out to muss Han’s hair in the usual, exasperating show of affection. He had a glider waiting for them and with another sly glance at Luke announced that he’d get the lift for them.

“Right, thanks.”

Condescension from a Wookiee, Han found, had the same effect on him as a cold shower. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and scrambled into his clothes, aware of Luke’s glance on him and the moment it turned aside. A door falling shut, but maybe not locked anymore ― _definitely not_ , he thought when Luke stopped, still inside the room. A hand brushing Han’s arm, as if in regret.

“Han, wait. I haven’t answered your question.”

Faced with that torn look on Luke’s face, Han had a hard time recalling the actual question, though the problem itself was too damn obvious.

“I’ve constructed ― I didn’t realize it at the time...” Luke gestured impatiently. “I thought I was letting go, but instead I’ve just shielded myself. On Endor.”

“Shielded?” There it was at last, the missing piece in a godawful puzzle, and Han didn’t want to recognize it.

“Against all feeling.” Luke took a deep breath, straightened his back to a single expression of resolve. “That’s why I can’t―”

“Yeah, you can,” Han stopped him. “Just... take your time. It’s up to you.”

For a moment he thought Luke might parry with something ― not protest, not exactly ― but all that came was a braced nod. Acknowledgment. Han supposed he could live with that. For a time.

He walked from the room without a backward glance. Like a divide in his own body, the sense of a constant limit kept him shackled and apart from the first taste of wholeness he’d had since the carbon freeze.

* * *

On their way to the Palace, Luke and Chewie filled him in on essentials, and the cross-currents of vehicles and armed troops swarming through the sector supplied a plethora of details. About a third of the Palace denizens had surrendered their defense, some had tried to bail like the group they’d encountered in the undercity, but the frenzied rest’d put up an ugly fight when Alliance commandos stormed their last hold-out. Much to Han’s gratification, a strike team had made it inside through the camouflaged exit from which the scarlet guard had launched his attack.

He rubbed the back of his head where a dull ache still thrummed and knew he wouldn’t feel sorry for pulling _that_ stunt even if there’d been no strategic advantage at all.

“Shield down yet?” he asked with a glance at the glowering sky. Just the knowledge that taking off for open space was a realistic option would make Coruscant that much more bearable. But according to Chewie, the slicers needed more time to break through all the security codes.

Straight ahead, the Palace thrust up, a massive slant of defiant marble that grew to menacing proportions and took a large segment out of the sky. Fingers of light slid across the gleaming flanks, and the wide plaza teemed with activity.

Chewbacca set them down on a landing terrace off the main entrance. Alliance officers in battle fatigues thronged instantly round the glider.

“Status, Lieutenant?” Han targeted one of them at random while his glance slid up the Palace ramparts ― and up and up, following the stony slope like a dark runway.

“Security teams are still combing for booby traps, but this tract should be safe, sir,” the soldier replied. “You’ll find General Rieekan in one of the conference rooms on ground level.”

Han eyed the giant portals and tried to ready himself for debriefings and some grisly sight-seeing.

Maybe the Massassi temples on Yavin Four should’ve prepared him for the bludgeoning impact of sheer height and depth, but Palpatine’s Palace was a whole new experience. The vaults cradled shadows like prized possessions, and the alignment of pillars along the central corridor channeled every glance down a lightless gorge. Wide enough for the Falcon to fly through, the hall rang with echoes, every minor noise magnified with obtrusive resonance that demanded walking on tiptoe. Han wasn’t about to comply.

Five minutes of wandering through this grotesque cavern of a residence gave him a pretty good sense of the lasting terror, and he hated every moment of it. The whole place had been built to reduce people to shivering ornaments.

“We oughta have it all pulled down,” he said at length, dry echoes floating around him. Several steps behind, Chewie gave a loud bellow of assent. “There’s just no way something like this can be turned into―” Han waved a hand. Imagination failed in the face of relentless despotism built in stone.

“An expression of freedom?” Luke suggested in a softer voice.

“Not even if you paint it blue, light it like a Shaheerian casino, and bring in all the string dancers,” Han agreed.

“I think you’re right.” But Luke’s flat tone disclaimed any interest in that particular line of thought, and absolute concentration cast his face in steel.

Han turned his glance aside. Part of him still wanted to wrap up tight in the memory of the past hours, let nothing else barge in, and maybe he’d hoped, in spite of everything, that Luke would feel the same way. _Feel_. But he couldn’t, he’d — what? — shielded himself, although trapped was more like it. A notion like a shockwave trailing long ripples.

They passed a couple of empty audience chambers, every door guarded by Alliance soldiers who’d adopted poses like carved statues. Further down the corridor, evidence of recent fighting showed in carbon scores across the marble and stone chips crunching under their boots. Mere scratches on the surface of a monument designed to outlast an eternity.

Han stopped at the first intersection and narrowed his eyes at the gloomy hallway that angled off on the left. He could smell the faint sweetness of leftover rhodon gas. Looked like gunfights had taken out what sparse illumination there used to be. Torchlights flitted through the night-drowned distance, and the voices of Alliance personnel wafted from it in garbled murmurs.

“Guess that’s where the conference rooms must be.”

Chewie gave a reluctant rumble, but Luke had already set himself in motion.

In the first few rooms on the right, Alliance techs waded through the scorched remains of technical equipment. Looked like the Imperials had set up their military headquarters here.

“So... what d’you think?” Han asked in a lowered voice, when Luke paused to peer into another unlit, deserted chamber.

Luke’s eyes wandered slowly across an imposing array of marble pillars, carved in the shape of colossal armored guards. “They’re... gone. Palpatine, my father. He never lived here.”

The slight emphasis on _lived_ made sense to Han, and he breathed out slowly. He recalled their visit to the Jedi temple, now a friendly, shiny memory by comparison. “So you don’t, uh, sense anything?”

Luke shook his head. “I do, but all I can feel is impersonal. Like... set patterns anyone could fill. Nothing―” He broke off and turned to look straight at Han. “Nothing to do with me.”

 _‘Course not!_ Han almost blurted. Right now, Luke was a silhouette in the close fabric of shadows, but just a few hours ago, he’d been ― “That’s a relief,” Han compromised.

The hollow, dry absence of power surrounded them, stark against the backdrop of muted sounds.

“There’s more.” With a half-turn, Luke glanced back down the hall. “It’s so much... clearer now, I feel―” He interrupted himself with a small motion that looked like startlement, but before Han could react, a call made short work of the moment’s privacy.

“Chewie!” Leia’s voice cut through the gloom. “Are they with you?”

A small party moved towards them, out of the torch-sprinkled dark, and Chewie’s beam glanced across Leia before he flicked it aside.

“Right here,” Han answered, and couldn’t help the rough edge in his tone. “When’d you get here?”

“A few hours ago.” She placed a hand on his arm, her smile darting from him to Luke. “I’m glad you’re safe. I heard you were injured.”

“’S been fixed in the meantime,” Han retorted and locked the rest of it away from reach, almost sure he could see the color rise in Luke’s face.

“Good. We’ll need your expertise.”

“What, there’s no victory spree or anything?”

“Later.” Leia shot him a stern look laced with humor. “Right now, there’s work to do, flyboys.”

 

Further down the corridor, a large, near-circular chamber had been converted into a conference room, a lash-up of com equipment and data consoles shoved haphazardly against one wall. Under the caustic worklights, Alliance techs were still checking their gear, drawing intermittent electronic whines. On one side of the large, ring-shaped table, Intell officers were hunched over datapads while com plugs jabbered directly into their ears. General Rieekan presided over a shuffle of simultaneous debriefings and strategy discussions with unflappable resolve. They’d barely set foot inside when his glance accosted Han.

“Solo!” Rieekan launched a tired smile. “Good to see you back on your feet. I’ve been waiting to hear your report. Sit down.”

Han pulled up a chair for himself. From the corner of his eye, he saw Artoo trundle up towards Luke with a cheerful red flash. Since they’d had no use for astromechs on undercity patrols, the little droid had been loaned out to Rogue squadron for the duration. Luke squatted in front of him, to check his sensor controls by ways of greeting, and something about that ordinary little scene eased a tension node from Han’s gut.

His report wasn’t long enough to fill a thumbnail data chip, but as soon as he’d finished, Rieekan sprang a map of the undercity at him. “Several hundred high-ranking officers must have escaped today,” he commented, “and others will join them.”

“We’re not gonna get ‘em,” Han said bluntly, “not down there, even if we spend decades hunting them.”

The general raised his eyebrows, unruffled in the face of impossible odds, and studied the map again. “All the more, we need to install security measures.”

They were still at it when a motley group came swerving in and latched onto Leia with a chorus of cheers and demands in half a dozen dialects. Gofers from the ethnic sectors, by the look of it. Among them, Han recognized several of the Worren, Aqualish and Machukans who’d enlisted as scouts. The room was filling up with representatives of every branch in the Alliance forces and messengers from different districts, as busy and loud as any Rebel camp.

Han rubbed at the back of his skull while he squinted at the map, in a hopeless effort to keep the reviving headache at bay. Part of his mind worked through strategic implications and another circled in limbo.

A sudden drop in the noise brought his head up. From the center of the room, a com unit emitted green sparkles that settled slowly into Mon Mothma’s image, Admiral Ackbar at her shoulder. A clear broadband signal, now that safe transmission channels weren’t a concern anymore. Conversations faltered into expectant quiet.

Right then, someone slipped into the seat next to Han, and he didn’t need to turn his head to recognize Luke. Warmth brushed across his skin like a shadow.

“Gentlebeings!” Triumph and elation rang in Mothma’s voice. “I thank you all for your relentless efforts and the sacrifices you’ve made. Emperor Palpatine died in the battle of Endor, but today, the Empire itself has truly fallen.”

A round of cheers splashed through the room, and Han caught sight of General Madine by a bulky data console. But the general’s attention slanted past him to target Luke with a covert glance, before it wandered back to the transmission. Discomfort pricked the back of Han’s neck. For all Luke’s involvement of the past weeks, Command wasn’t going to forget that damned inquiry anytime soon. And of course Luke had noticed the look that linked him with Palpatine’s death and probed for a veiled connection. Han could feel him shift slightly in his chair, wishing to hell there was something he could do.

Absurd situation anyway. Mon Mothma continued with her speech, and here they were, sitting carefully apart in a crowded room. _Well, get in tune with realities_. Han made an effort to concentrate on the holo.

“I have news,” Mothma said, “that some of you will be especially glad to hear. We received word today that several worlds of the Inner Rim have thrown off the Imperial yoke and will join us in our efforts to liberate the systems that still suffer from oppression. Telassi, Elyidar, Phyrion―”

Shouts, hoots and whistles went up, and the Worren broke into high, rasping calls at the mention of their homeworld when Mothma’s voice faltered suddenly into a blistering electronic screech, and the transmission wavered.

“What’s goin’ on?” Han sent a quick look around, hand twitching for his blaster.

Several comlinks beeped at once, sudden excitement spreading like the warning ripples of a quake, until someone said, “The shield’s down.”

At the back of the room, an Intell officer punched his fist into the air ― “ _Open sky!_ ” ― and Han could feel it strike home, the small shock of a promise resonating all the way back through his own life. When he turned sideways, he found Luke scanning the crowd with that closed, watchful look, and a hot pang traveled up his chest. _Not for you_. Han balled his hand tight. _Not yet_.

All around them, the meeting broke up into bustling, noisy groups, and from the company of Worren, Leia gestured for Luke to join her.

 _Later_ , Han told himself as he pulled up the datapad and went back to reorganizing the patrols’ duty roster. On the periphery of his vision, Chewie’s return registered, several fighter pilots hard on his heels. Han keyed up the next file, his headache about to reach full bloom. The whole scene started to drift away from him, like a holo going out of focus.

“I think you need a rest, Han,” Leia’s voice startled him from his slump. “You’ve been injured and should be―”

“I’m all right,” he cut in, but the slur in his voice sabotaged his best effort.

“You can afford to get a rest now,” Leia said gently. “The worst part is over.”

 _No, it ain’t_ , griped a small voice at the back of his head, far removed from the military situation. He slid a glance at Luke who’d sat down with the Worren on the far side of the table and listened with untiring patience.

Han set his teeth. Sheer stubbornness tied him to this dragging exercise. That, and the thought of returning to his quarters alone, like every night before. As if nothing worth the mention had changed.

“Be reasonable,” Leia said wryly. “You’re almost asleep at the helm by now.”

“I’m tellin’ you, I’m―”

Two large hands clamped down on his shoulders and nipped Han’s protest in the bud. From behind his chair, Chewie gave a menacing growl that startled the Machukans and halted all discussion at their end of the table.

“I agree completely,” Leia said in a sterner tone. “If he can’t see reason, you should haul him off to―”

“All right, all right!” Han swatted at the Wookiee and twisted out of his chair. Too damn tired to think straight.

He met Luke’s eyes across the table, but if there was a message in that lingering glance, Han wasn’t sure he could read it right. He’d been waiting for some kind of signal all along, and it just wasn’t coming. Patience snapped at a sweep of acute, sensual memory, and he turned abruptly. There was always tomorrow.

* * * * *

After ten hours of leaden sleep, it took an icy blast from the Falcon’s shower to yank his mind back to the surface. Retreating to his own ship for the night had seemed like the only workable compromise between weariness and strung-out tension.

Han let the cold water batter him for several minutes, teeth gritted and skin prickling. When he stepped out, jump-started circulation supplied enough energy to clear his head, his skin flushing under the brisk rub of the towel. That was when the shreds of vague dreams began floating up, tangled and filled out with memory.

Han paused in front of the reflector to finger-comb his hair, while reality convoluted itself into isolate facets that didn’t fit. He wiped at a thread of wetness on his chest and could feel Luke’s touch in the brush of phantom sensation. Intense with buried needs.

A startling onset of change curled up behind every rational thought, tugged Han from drowsiness into a dazzled kind of unrest. _Cool it, will ya?_ he called himself to order. If the past weeks had taught him anything, the bottom line was that he couldn’t predict Luke’s reactions. A scant hour in bed sure hadn’t changed that. Han gave his mirror image a caustic look before he stalked out into the corridor.

His attention swerved back to blunt, ordinary matters when the sight of burnt wires and a warped cover plate jumped out at him. So much for Chewie’s reassurance that the Falcon hadn’t suffered any damage during combat.

In the cockpit, the message log flaunted a memo that called him to a Command staff meeting in the afternoon. Han glanced out through the viewport at the usual vista of soot-stained syncrete and sullen scraps of sky. Not exactly the dawning of a new era.

The Falcon was parked atop their temporary base again, and a supply shuttle buzzed nearby, probably hauling equipment and personnel to a new posting. Now that all the backup they wanted could be called down from orbit, the different contingents would be reassigned, and his own duties were up for another shuffling of the cards. Something to think about. Since their mission to Endor, he’d followed a rigid chain of necessities, and he’d never planned ahead.

The muted sputter of the blowtorch cut his indecision short. Looked like Chewie had seen fit to start some quick and dirty repairs before the ship’s captain could demand explanations. Han stretched his back and went out to join him, scanning the Falcon for bad news.

The replaced sensor dish was still in one piece, but some of the wiring looped out in sorry tangles. Astride on the bow mandible, Chewbacca threw him a mournful look.

“C’mon,” Han grumbled, “it can’t be that bad! Just gimme an upfront damage report, you big chicken.”

Chewie was still working his way through a list of negligible malfunctions when a minor background noise grabbed Han and set off some inner proximity alert. He turned slowly.

Luke walked towards them from the lift cabin, much like he’d arrived every night for their improvised workouts. Casual, controlled, unrevealing.

“Good morning,” Han called, though noon had come and gone, while he wrestled with the spillover of absurd reactions.

“Hi, Han. Chewie.”

Traces of resignation showed through Luke’s restricted smile. Han gestured him towards the ramp for minimal privacy. “Something wrong?”

Luke’s glance coasted across the Falcon’s scarred side. “I’ve come to tell you that I’ve signed up for a diplomatic mission with Leia.”

And that slammed a door on every hope for a change, leaving Han with nothing but the extraction of dry facts, like so much ash in his mouth. “Where to?”

“Warrin’ya, the Worren homeworld,” Luke answered. “They’ve specifically invited me... for what I represent, and because I was stationed in their sector here.” He shifted his weight with obvious discomfort. “Leia encouraged me to accept. They’re important allies.”

“Yeah. Can’t argue with that.” A sting of irony flitted after that statement. _Can’t argue? Hell_.

This was Day One after the big battle, not quite the end of a military campaign, but close enough. Han supposed he should’ve expected that politics would rush the breach instantly. And he could see the rationale behind this mission, once he nudged his mind into the mechanics of diplomacy. Rich couldn’t begin to describe a world commonly known as Palpatine’s Larder. Under Imperial rule, Worren farmers and breeders had provisioned for large parts of the fleet.

“Leia feels that we should negotiate a formal alliance treaty as soon as possible,” Luke went on. “We need their support.”

“After payin’ for the Empire’s upkeep so long, they might be tempted to keep all their assets to themselves,” Han guessed. Before Imperial occupation, the Worren had been headline traders, notorious for hard and lucrative bargains. “Makes sense, I s’pose.” There, he could do rational like a first-class actor, no matter the mutinous heat in his gut. “When’re you leaving?”

“Tonight. I’ll just get my stuff from our base, then I’m due for another briefing...” Luke trailed off into a small shrug.

Rationality went belly-up with that bit of information.

“Why, Command sure ain’t wasting any time!” Han snapped.

Luke gave him a look of braced acceptance. “The majority of the Worren who used to live here want to set out to their homeworld right away,” he replied. “Leia and Mon Mothma believe that our... proposal will be better received if we accompany them.”

 _And you don’t mind leavin’ now, do you?_ Han tried to knock reason into his temper before he could say all the wrong things. “Guess they know what they’re talkin’ about,” he returned curtly.

Though Luke gave a dutiful nod, his eyes searched Han for a long moment, and Han’s defensive temper came apart under that scrutiny. Memory sparked alive in all his senses, intruding with desperate force.

“I guess I’d better go,” Luke said finally, but the hoarse note in his voice gave Han an opening.

“Wait.” Impulse broke free with the small motion Luke made towards him. “I just―”

Out of words, Han looped an arm around his neck, ready to loosen his hold at the first sign of resistance, but there was no hint of it when he pulled Luke close. Only the supple tension skimming unresolved between them, a quick breath that lifted Luke’s shoulders and eased into startling lenience. A hand that clasped Han’s fingers with abrupt pressure.

 _Tell him_... Han checked that impulse with effort. _Tell him what? And bungle everything, now that we’ve come this far?_ He bowed his head until pale, wind-blown strands brushed his mouth. “Stay safe.”

“Han...” Luke’s voice made a rough caress of his name, hovering on a moment’s stillness before he straightened, and they disengaged, slow and awkward with everything that hadn’t been said. “I will.”

Han watched after him when he walked to the lift, rooted to the spot between reason and denial. From the Falcon’s back, Chewie’s soft, wistful groan floated across to him and started a cross-cut into recollection. A sound he’d heard so many times before ― on Yavin, on Hoth ― glancing across his defensive logic with a truth he’d tried to ignore.

Han turned to face his Wookiee partner squarely. “Not this time, Chewie. It ain’t me, running for cover.”

 

He threw himself into repairs with a tight-lipped fervor that didn’t fool Chewbacca for a minute. Wired and furious, working up a sweat in next to no time. Grateful, too, that his schedule for the rest of the day was crammed to bursting with logistics and wouldn’t leave much time for pointless second-guessing. Except that it didn’t quite work out that way.

Hour after hour accumulated a sense of suspended reality. While Han wrapped things up in his office, he could see himself, a streamlined cog in the gears of the big machine. Fast forward another week or a month or a year, and he could idle the days away like this, plenty of front-page operations to show for his service record, but nothing of substance. Coruscant had never left him enough breathing space.

 _Lookin’ for a convenient excuse?_ Han slapped his datapad shut and cast a parting glance through the broken window. He could quit the military or barter for a jazzier posting. Unlike Rieekan or Madine, he’d never had a permanent contingent glued to his command. If he could function within the rigors of military order at all, it’d have to be as a wild card on hand for variable deployment. _Yeah, so how about escort duty for some home-bound Worren?_ It always came back to that anyway.

As he stalked down the spirals of the central corridor, Han made another effort to rally the voice of reason and catch up with necessities beyond his control.

It made sense for Luke to be part of that mission. Whatever doubts Command might harbor after that godsbedamned inquiry, they’d learn to judge him for his actions, not his heritage. And maybe this assignment had been meant as an advance to the trust account, a chance for Luke to prove himself. _Like he’s got anything left to prove?_ Han snorted. _But a beautiful world like that’s gonna do him good_.

A sliver of irrational misgivings punctured the pretty argument the moment he tried to picture Luke, relaxed and at ease in some rural idyll. Han slowed his pace. Coruscant, and all the sneaking round in the undercity had scrawled superstition across his brain. And yet...

Memory of the day before clung to him like a high-voltage signature, imprinted on his skin, a volatile element to every moment’s closeness. In the space of a breath, unease traced itself back to Luke’s brief and shaky explanations.

 _I thought I was letting go, but instead I’ve just shielded myself_.

Whatever that meant, there’d been trouble behind that statement. And too many scraps of evidence dropped into place now. Wild energies burning up when they sparred, like flares from an unstable circuit. Something brittle and desperate in Luke’s control, like he was poised on an edge Han couldn’t name ― but it raked a small chill down his back. _Like he’s bound to explode_...

 _Not Luke_ , he countered that notion, _not after all he’s already been through_. But now that his gut feeling had taken definite shape, it kept dogging him and struck answering sparks from his banked impatience. They’d almost made a connection, almost gotten past that unnatural barrier ―

 _That’s what you’d like to think_. But the voice of reason had lost much of its punch over the past few minutes. Han turned into a broad hallway, and wandered through a steady flow of Alliance officers and scouts, distracted between the sound of snappy footsteps and clipped conversations. One more try. One more chance.

He stopped outside the conference room, and watched the scuffle of uniforms like a stodgy traveling show. He could ask for any assignment, and he’d get it. No question what kind of stint Chewie would favor. And his gut instincts, the choices he’d made off the cuff had never turned on him yet.

* * *

Spacious and bright, the bridge of the Mon Cal cruiser hummed with pre-flight activities. Next to the captain, a pair of awestruck Worren gazed out through the scopic viewport, at the starfield that sprawled beyond Coruscant’s orbital docks.

“Some of them were born here and never had a chance to travel,” Leia said under her breath. Such a foreign thought to her.

“I can imagine how they must feel.” Luke paused to listen after his own words, trailing thin echoes to his memories of Tatooine. The knowledge of freedom before he could claim it, glittering from a range of stars on the horizon.

He turned back to the viewport and watched the passage of pinpoint lights in Coruscant’s orbit, searching for calm outside of himself. Something to ease his mind into those clean, abstract patterns and detach from the mutiny that lingered in his body. This constant state of strung watchfulness and alarm. This need to stay...

A soft whistle flitted through the purr of flight consoles. The comm officer swiveled his chair and signaled the captain. “Incoming ship, sir. Request for docking permission.”

“On speaker.” The captain tilted his large head and glanced at Leia. “As of 1700 hours, our escort has been fully accounted for.”

A crackle joined the boom of his voice as the channel opened. “This is the Millennium Falcon. Orders from Admiral Ackbar―”

“Han?” Leia swung towards the voice pickup. “Don’t tell me you’ve been appointed to protect us from harm.”

Close behind her, Luke traced the leap of pulse into his throat. Electric. As if his body had made a choice for him, one that he wasn’t free to make.

“Check with Ackbar,” Han’s voice retorted after a short, static-filled pause. “I hope you’ve got room for one more.”

 

* * * **3** * * *

_I want to be completed_  
 _I want to disappear_  
 _I want to be uncovered_  
 _Take me down_...

 

WARRIN’YA

Stagnant heat rushed them from the depth of the canyon, caught between saffron walls and ivory rockface. Han loosened his collar and rolled up his sleeves as he followed the delegation down narrow sandstone steps, into the gorge that wound past the slant of natural cliffs and magistrate buildings. The Worren were an outdoor kind of people, but the terrace where they’d spent all morning discussing trade routes and taxation didn’t catch any direct sunlight before midday. Han let the prickly, dry heat wash over him. For all the lush vegetation around the capital, it wasn’t so hard to imagine that the Worren homeworld had once been a vast sprawl of badlands.

At the bottom of the stairs, their guide unlocked a gate that fell open on ranks of tall standing stones, planted among gravel and rock. Drab, compared to the wild excess of color that glared everywhere else, from ghambi orchards and wycorn fields to the sand-glazed architectture. Rounding the mixed group of diplomats, Han moved up to Luke’s side.

“Wonder what makes this place so special,” he said under his breath. In between negotiations, they’d been herded past memorable sites of every kind, but this particular visit had been flagged a red-tape honor.

“I don’t know,” Luke answered just as softly, though his tone suggested something else. Long hours outdoors had lightened his hair and brushed a hint of bronze across his skin. And maybe the sight before them appealed to his memories of the desert. The place sure looked like a miniature preserve of the planet’s original desolation.

Their guide walked up to the first row of steles and raised a hand to them like a greeting, her blue robe brighter than the deep noon sky.

“This,” she said, “is our garden of recollection. Each of the stones you see here commemorates our lost clans and families. When our people started to travel space, the first stones were put up to remind us of their absence and to symbolize their lingering attachment to our homeground.” Her long fingers outlined the marks of weathered inscriptions. “Others were erected to mourn those who fell in the wars.”

“That must have been a long time ago.” Leia studied the sand-crusted memorial with close, earnest interest. No one could’ve guessed at the degree of impatience rankling under her composure, but Han had been busy quenching the same reaction. For three days, the talks had caught on one obstacle after the next.

“In most cases, that is true. Thankfully.” The Worren led them deeper into the grove of dry stones baking in the sun.

Some of the slabs had sagged, cutting across rock and sky at oblique angles. With the tilt and slope of uneven ground, conflicting sensory input pulled at Han’s balance. Half a step behind him, Luke paused to trace a winged symbol across deep fissures in the stone.

“However...” Their guide stopped by a towering slab that jutted above the rest, almost white in the noonblaze. “This one here was erected after the Imperial trade embargo, in tribute to the courage of our mothers and their consorts who refused to bow to the rule of a Sith Lord.” Her pupils narrowed to vertical slits. “The Black Death, our people called him.”

Didn’t take much guesswork to decode that chummy alias. Han shifted his stance, ready to press past and move on.

“Darth Vader,” supplied Commander Tennent, Rieekan’s deputy, who’d been handling matters of military cooperation with stiff-necked accuracy.

“Yes.” The Worren bowed her head, but her tone was savage. “During the early years of Imperial occupation, he spent much time here. He even owned a residence outside the city.”

Alert and caution tightened Luke’s posture. When Han’s glance cut past his shoulder, he caught the flicker of concern in Leia’s eyes.

“A residence?” he voiced the question Luke couldn’t ask.

“It was sold several years ago to one of the governor’s advisors,” the Worren answered. “When he fled, our people committed the remains to the fire. There is nothing left but ashes and broken stone.”

And that closed the topic, though vigilance kept its grip on Luke’s expression. Han clamped his teeth together over an impulsive reaction that couldn’t change a thing. _Not your fault_. And how many times would they run into a situation like this, always wrangling with the same noxious question? _What’d these people do if they knew the truth?_ Years and years into the future.

As the group moved on, he angled closer to Luke’s side, protective instinct igniting. “Guess that was the whole point of takin’ us here.”

“Maybe.” Luke surprised him with a look of fascinated speculation. “There’s something about this place...”

“Yeah?” But whatever it might be, Luke didn’t seem to expect another whiplash of bad news.

From the stones’ shortened shadows, they stepped into a circular enclosure, the humped backs of large, rounded boulders thrusting from crumbly soil. On either side of the path, gravel had been raked into complex patterns that intersected in pale copper, tawny and white.

“This,” the guide said, “is the oldest part of the garden. Its origins are unknown, but we believe that our ancestors recorded their travels in this way, when our world was still a wasteland and they roamed with the shifting waterflows.”

Luke squatted in front of a boulder, trailing his fingers across the textured stone. “What is this?”

When he bent closer, Han noticed hints of pale veins webbing the surface.

“Ah.” The Worren’s smile exposed small, pointed teeth. “They’re _ledya_ ― firestone. All the memory tablets were carved from it. Only the oldest among us remember it now, but it is said that these stones light up in times of great need. Then, their ancient fire flows once again through their veins.” She sent a roving glance across the scattered rocks. “It is remarkable that you should notice.”

Though she headed back briskly, the guided tour finished, Luke remained crouched by the stone. Splayed fingers searching as if for points of contact, with a curious tenderness that kept Han rooted to the spot.

“Something to do with the Force?” he asked eventually, while the others ambled off, bewildered visitors in a stony maze.

Luke straightened to meet his eyes, expression calm and defenseless. The quiet stretched around them like an ally, guarding a closeness that grew in awkward starts and retreats. “It’s like... a focus of some kind. I wonder why they stopped burning.”

 _I wonder why_ you _did_. The thought raised itself with the force of an inevitable conclusion. Han held it in his mind, always circling the same sore spot, while demands and questions prodded him for action. He’d been waiting for some undisturbed privacy long enough.

Late at night, in their fancy quarters, there was barely enough time to rehash the day’s upshot. And that Leia roomed next door set a narrow limit on his options.

“Listen...” he started when they made their way to the exit. “Wanna join me on a little trip out into the country later? There’s a traditional ship designers’ center on the northeast coast. We could go sailing maybe.”

Gravel trickling underfoot, Luke took a few more steps in silence. “I wouldn’t mind skipping this afternoon’s session,” he finally admitted. Which would be all about taxation and revenues, another round of wrestling with tedious arithmetics.

“Thought so,” Han said dryly, and let a grin break free.

“I’ll check with Leia...”

Luke’s sidelong glance lingered a second too long and brushed Han like midday heat. Just like the moment he’d come aboard, to join up for the mission. Not so long ago, that same reaction would’ve lit Luke’s carefree, radiant smile. All the things he’d taken for granted. And yet, a look like this carried the mark of change, a shade of wishing no longer denied.

“She’ll see reason, I’m sure,” Han returned lightly, charged with the sense of a turning point ahead of them. He could almost taste it.

* * *

All along the ragged coastline grew wild _yssami_ trees, their spiky tufts dotting the rocks in shades of indigo and boisterous purple, predicting dusk that had yet to reach the sky. Luke closed his eyes as the wind carried their minty scent across, mixed with the heavier tangs of saltwater and beached seaweeds. The barge juddered in the shift of air currents and rode them like waves, although the sea was still miles away.

“They’re jittery things, huh?” Han stood at the center of the barge, his head cocked, appreciating the craft’s tilt to the wind, the white shirt tied negligently around his hips.

“Nothing like our skiffs back home,” Luke agreed reflexively, distracted once again by the sight of him.

His bare torso angled back, Han set the solar sail into a brash wind, the sting of sunlight etching his frame against the silver fabric.

“Yeah. Glad they trusted us with this baby,” he flung over his shoulder. “They might’ve changed their minds if they’d witnessed this.”

As if to prove the point, the sail flipped forward again, and Luke gave the rudder a quick tug, limiting his attention to the craft’s intricate balance.

Blueprints for solar barges still followed traditional designs, so the resident engineers had explained, developed in a distant era when harsh, unfaltering sunlight had been the primary resource. A race of tough survivors, the Worren had adapted to severe changes of climate as their sun cooled and shrunk. Over the millennia, their leathery skin had thickened to preserve warmth beneath gristly scales throughout lengthening winters, and their engineers developed terraforming technologies that groomed barren ground to the requirements of farmland and pasture. Only here, on the edges of the eastern land mass, a stark wilderness remained, black and reddish glitters of volcanic rock biting through the loam.

“There, that should do it...” Han dropped down on the deck beside Luke, sprawled out under swathes of air and light. “Can’t imagine how anyone’d handle a flimsy thing like this in a storm out over the sea.”

Between the taut sail and the shallows’ gray expanse, the sea was a distant green strip, pulled far out to fringe the sun-glazed sky. Low tide bared skeins of seaweed in streaming patterns, and the pearly sheen of shells clustered along flanks of rounded stone.

As close to an ocean as he’d ever been, Luke traced a subtle magnetism in the atmosphere, deep and slow and self-contained. An odd excitement bloomed in the pit of his stomach.

“You could do it,” he said. “With some practice.”

“Make that a _lot_ of practice.” Han bounced back to his feet and gripped the rudder against a jostling wind. “Time we took a little break, I think.”

The reefed sail slowed their headlong speed as they banked the craft towards the cliffs.

“There...” Han indicated the direction with his chin. “Let’s take a look at those caves.”

They ducked the barge into a vast cavern, across a silvery scatter of tide pools. On the far side, daylight poured in a broad stripe down the black rock, but the cave tapered towards the rear.

They left the barge bobbing on antigravs, setting out to explore on the spur of the moment. Falling into a pattern Luke recognized, like the thin, sulfurous smells that recalled the Jundland crags. Han’s skin gleamed in the twilight as he moved, shadow more than form, pebbles rippling under each step.

Luke paused in front of a sheer surface, the rock black and polished as if cut with a knife. Higher up, he read the tracks of seismic activity across jagged fissures. At the level of his hips, a pale, salty crust marked the inrush of high tide.

“Han.” The name fled him like a rogue thought, the sound of his voice sharpened in the stony hollow.

“Yeah?” Halfway up the slope scaling towards daylight, Han turned, the back-lit frame poised and alert.

“Nothing.” But that wasn’t completely true either, and he gripped the hand Han reached to him, climbing the slope under a spell of sudden curiosity.

Out in the open, a blunt, lunar rockscape surrounded them, black cliffs rising above a crater filled with clear water. Circling a hard, cloudless sky. His neck craned, Luke paused inside the cavern’s mouth, struck by the recoil of a dream from the night before.

He’d been trapped under a flinty sky that lowered towards him until he knew he could stretch up a hand and touch it ― or be crushed under it ― and that was when a shout tore loose, rage ricocheting through it, that broke the sky like glass. Splinters rained down on him and pierced his skin. Yet worse had been the sound of his voice, nothing that belonged to him, seeping through cracks in his skin.

When he bolted awake, sweat-drenched and aghast, he’d almost checked the heel of his hand for a cut. So transparent. So painfully easy to see where that rebellious part of his mind strayed when he wasn’t watching.

“Looks like an eye from here.” Han had walked a few steps along a ledge and squatted by the pool’s rim. Under the water shimmered opalescent secrets of shell and coral, framed in a gauze of fronds.

“No, more like... a hiding place,” Luke said, joining him, and they both knew what he was talking about. He leaned his back against the rock, stored warmth pushing through the fabric of his shirt.

Images still burned in the back of his mind, gleaned from other dreams that left him raw and unbalanced, too close to recollections that kept twisting inside him. Han’s breath against his own, fanning a fevered longing that rose out of nowhere. The gentleness of his hands, commanding sharp-edged needs to his skin.

“How much longer can we go on like this?”

He turned his face to watch surprise slip over Han’s profile, blending with quicksilver reflections off the water. The _we_ he’d used fell apart under scrutiny, preserved only in embers, in isolate moments of snapped control.

“Not a matter of _can_ , I guess,” Han said tightly, a hard gaze focused on the pool’s surface. “More of wanting to.”

“I haven’t given you anything. I didn’t mean for things to be this way, but―”

“Hold it, Luke!” Something snapped through Han when he threw up a hand. “And don’t tell me you’re sorry either!”

Though regrets had been regular visitors, back in the months of protective seclusion, they’d never touched the core of his choices. They had no place here.

“I’m not,” Luke said softly.

“Give ‘n take’s not a matter of keeping scores. You should know that.” Han dropped back against the rockface and met Luke’s eyes. “You’ve done more than pullin’ me out of the carbon freeze. More’n coming after me to Bespin.” He pulled up his knees, a defensiveness in his posture that didn’t reach his voice. “You’ve made a big difference in my life, and I’m not gonna back off from that anymore.”

“But, Leia...” Luke shook his head. “When did you change your mind?”

“I never did. Not where it counts. It was you, on Hoth...” Han raked a hand through his hair, the admission coming hard, forced out with the old, bristling stubbornness. “It’s not that I never felt anything for Leia, but ― you ‘n me... that just went deeper’n what I could take back then. That’s all.”

His expression eased unaccountably, and Han leaned back, open to the sky that blistered overhead, a dark blue rim of afternoon the only measure of time.

Luke made no attempt to turn his eyes away, endured the way his pulse jumped, words circling in his mind without finding a place to settle down. Off-center, the memory of Hoth taunted him with a lost connection, with the clarity of something as cutting and incomprehensible as the black diamond facets in the rock.

 _I want to feel again_ , he thought violently.

“Tell me why,” Han said next to him, voice gruff with pent frustration. “About that shield of yours.”

His own reasoning presented itself in stark right angles, set against shattering comprehension. From the gaps, splintered emotions glared back at him, distorted shapes like creatures from a nightmare.

“It just got too much. I lost control of my feelings when the Emperor―” Luke stopped before that memory could impose itself and press past the rationale that contained it. “I didn’t think I could be calm enough to channel the Force and avoid using it for my own needs, if I couldn’t let it _all_ go.”

Han’s response was limited to a skeptical noise, curbed by that iron willingness to listen.

“It started earlier than that,” Luke continued, a longer sequence of cause and effect revealing itself for the first time. Here, in the crisp air that smelled of the desert, where ocean tangs reverted to the sodium sting of salt flats and mineral lakes. “After Bespin, I holed up on Tatooine. That was the beginning. I thought I could... refashion myself ― something like that, and I had very little left to hold on to.” Luke glanced down at the water barrier that mirrored him, isolated against the sky. “I didn’t think there was a place left for me in the world.”

He heard Han’s sharp breath of protest, his body vibrant with dissent. And regrets, perhaps.

“It’s not working,” Luke finished. Sunlight slipped along the fine-grained cinder of the rock, scattered across glassy half-moon fractures. Untenable like the constant drain in himself, the loss of focus and grounding. “I took too long to realize, but it disrupts... everything. I can’t feel the Force like I used to. Back on Coruscant, I thought it might be Palpatine’s presence, his use of the Dark Side clouding my mind, but that’s not it. It’s me.”

“And you can’t be the Jedi they all want you to be,” Han concluded, a harsh note unsettling his clear effort at impersonal logic.

The rebound of that judgement drove Luke to his feet. He couldn’t blame Han, but failure lashed out at him faster than he could brace for. He paced several steps down the ledge, needing the physical distance to assess.

“I could even draw on the Dark Side without noticing,” he said, recalling his dreadful slip the last time they’d sparred. “Everything I’ve learned has become meaningless. But it’s not just that...”

 _Not me. Jedi_.

A capsuled truth shot to the surface, and he wheeled to face Han again. “I can’t be _anything_ like this. Do you understand?”

A troubling impact darkened Han’s eyes. “I think I’m gettin’ the picture,” he said, his shoulders settling. “Look, I... I never meant to make it any harder for you than it has to be.”

“I know that. And I want to undo it,” Luke answered, quieting himself at the center of decision. “But I need to deal with it alone. I have to.”

“What’re you sayin’?” Suspicion narrowed Han’s eyes. “That I’d better stay out of it and watch while you’re―”

“No. Without you...” Short of words, he crouched down to touch Han’s shoulder and felt the coolness of his fingers in suddenly scalding contrast, curving them over muscle and bone, heat of the sun and steady pulse. A promise. The best he could offer at this point, yet not enough. No match for the wilder cadence of his dreams. “But there has to be a balance.”

“Guess we’ve just got different ideas about the way to get there.” Han tilted his head and raised his hand slowly, clasping it over Luke’s. “Anyway. You’d better tell me what it takes. I’ve been fumbling round in the dark too long.”

Luke gave a short shake of the head, a strange sensation widening his lungs, suspiciously close to relief. “Sometimes I think you know more about it than I do.”

“Oh, sure.” The start of a self-mocking grin curled Han’s mouth. “Let’s just say I get things right by accident sometimes. Once I’ve stopped banging my head against the nearest wall.”

“No.” Luke bent over, brushing the generous mouth with his own, caught for a moment in the startled breath that rushed out. “I mean it.”

* * *

At nights, the Worren’s capital bred rampant activity, all the streets droning with voices and the nervous saunter of _wigwhee_ -drums. Gliders and sleek hoverbarges drifted in the eerie silence of solar-powered craft, their shadows snaking across milling pedestrians in the condensed starlight of the galactic Core. No one who’d seen the Worren laze in the broad sunsplashes during the day would’ve expected that kind of frenetic bustle, but that went with the biorhythms of a cold-blooded species, Han supposed.

Thick wafts filled the air with the scents of spicy cooking as they made their way back to the magistrate complex and their quarters. Large brown moths bounced softly in and out of the cryogenic streetlights that crackled overhead. Minor noise that it was, Han kept picking it out, like a bassline for the buzz that rode his bloodstream. Vague unease clogged behind it.

So Luke had decided to take that shield down, and if that couldn’t be worked out in a day, so what? After all these weeks, a little more time didn’t look like a steep price to pay.

 _It’s ‘cause you’re poking around stuff you just don’t get and never will_ , Han told himself. Never mind the mechanical metaphors, he couldn’t even guess how it felt to be cut off from all sentiment. Luke lived trapped in the shadow of an inhuman conflict, far beyond the range of his own experience. Contained, but never resolved.

 _We’ll deal with it when we get there_ , Han stopped that thought briskly. _Besides, just look at him_...

A subliminal change revealed itself in Luke’s body language, an easier flow replacing the braced energy, like a hint of freedom.

“That smell,” he said suddenly. “Reminds me of Aunt Beru’s _cayad_ fry.”

Han swung a look at the vendor’s steam-veiled stall. “Wanna get some? Though you’d better check first if human tastebuds can take it without a burn-out.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Back in a moment, Luke handed him a portion of spit-roasted vegetables in oily red and green. Han grinned at the sight of him eating with his fingers, like a hungry teenager, unconcerned while they turned into the sloping avenue that ran all the way to their temporary digs.

A humming quiet filled the area surrounding the magistrate buildings. The light slanting from countless office windows made a haphazard mosaic on the pavement, overlaid by occasional flickers from holoreels.

“Maybe we should slate negotiations for late night hours to speed things up,” Han commented. “I get the feeling these people’re more interested in lookin’ after their own business than anything else.”

Luke wiped his hands on his pants. “Can you blame them?”

Han turned sideways to look at him, clearly recalling the blue-eyed boy who’d fired a verdict at him after two days of acquaintance. _Take care of yourself, Han. That’s what you’re best at_. And he’d sure come a long way to disprove the notion.

“Matter of fact, I can.” Han grinned at the sweep of surprise crossing Luke’s face. “They’re rich. Nobody’s askin’ them to fight, but they can damn well pool their resources.”

After the next turn, the classy guesthouse came into view, two sumptuous wings embracing a courtyard that overflowed with greenery. In Leia’s window, Han noticed the pale shimmers of a readout screen. Still at it, as usual. A faraway grumble of thunder rolled over the eastern mountain range.

In the lobby, the watchman on duty sat hunched over a sheaf of entry files, the muted newsreel cavorting on a flat screen behind his shoulder. Han nodded a casual greeting to the Worren when the grizzled image jumped into sudden, trenchant focus. He broke his pace so abruptly, Luke jostled into him, a question faltering on his mouth when his glance swerved in the same direction.

And met his own face, pale and strenuously composed, mouth working at answers that made no sound. Stark and exposed against the diffuse pastel color of a bulkhead.

It struck Han like a blow to the gut. The local government network was running the strictly confidential inquiry tape. No mistake.

“Is something wrong?” the Worren guard asked in heavily accented Basic.

“No. Just ― distracted. Been a long day.” Han made himself look away, at the guard’s broad, speckled face. “G’nite.”

“Good night, sir.” A puzzled look trailed them across the hall, and Han had to fight the stupid impulse to stare right back.

“Tell me we didn’t see that.”

Luke shook his head, wordless, as if infected by the newsreel’s grotesque silence. From here on, he’d be shackled to his father’s fling with ruthless power, and people would look at him through the lens of Vader’s crimes. Han couldn’t begin to guess at his thoughts.

On the stairs, a first clear thought took hold, targeting some faceless bastard who’d passed the tape along to stir up the worst kind of trouble. The next was to pack it in, haul Luke off to the Falcon and make a break for clear space. But Luke had never clicked with the logic of tactical retreats, and besides, they could do no better to paint a broad trail of suspicion across the galaxy.

What Han finally said was, “We’d better talk to Leia.”

 

Her reaction was pretty much what he’d expected. Curtailed alarm, coupled with white-lipped outrage at this breach of security protocols and trust.

“I’ll have to inform Mon Mothma at once,” she said briskly.

“Anyone come to mind who couldn’t wait to rat on us?” Han asked.

“In theory, only members of Command were authorized to view the tape.” Leia chose every word carefully, like she was handling detonators. “But if we checked with Intell, I’m sure we’d find that an odd number of technical staff members had access as well.”

Luke had taken a seat beside her, on a couch that glared with wild floral patterns. A protective kind of concern in his posture, in the looks he slanted his sister.

“Sure, blame it on the hired hands,” Han growled. “ _Nobody’s_ gonna start sellin’ random datatapes, unless they got a friendly tip-off from somewhere higher up.”

“Perhaps someone was careless.” And that was as far as Leia would go, her fingers knotted together as she considered. “No one in Command would want to endanger this mission,” she stressed, “even if they had doubts about Luke’s loyalty, and I still find that unlikely.”

Han folded his arms, filing a private pledge to flush that gutless assassin out of hiding. A priority, it wasn’t. Not when a whole armory of banked grudges could blow in their face anytime.

The reader’s silvery shine wandered across Leia’s taut features when she turned her head. “It’s not a public broadcast,” she reasoned. “This network is reserved for government institutions and the magistrates of major cities.”

Some comfort. With a body of jaded civil servants like that, the grapevine would spill over by morning. “Question is, what’re they gonna do about it?” Han countered. “We already know they’ve got good reasons to have it in for Vader.”

“Yes.” Nothing else. Leia slid to her feet and took a short step to the data console. The rigid line of her back as eloquent as any bulletin.

“There’s a problem,” Han guessed.

The console switched on with a sweet chime, and Leia bent over it like she could step up its pace by force of will. “If I remember correctly, the local laws imply a liability of all clan members for the crime of one.”

“You don’t say,” Han snapped. Just what he’d wanted to hear. He stole a glance at Luke, watching the implications hit home, just as they hit him, logged and stowed with a barely perceptible start. “So they’re gonna charge Luke with Vader’s crimes ― is that it?”

“I’m merely saying that it’s possible within the legal framework,” Leia answered over her shoulder. “Let me look it up.”

“Right.” Han cast about for some foothold while the clicks across the keyboard picked up speed. Something to harness the bad feeling that raked his gut.

The Worren had a reputation for shrewd sobriety, not strong-arm stuff. Not a martial people, by any definition. They’d employed hired guns to beef up their defense forces back before the Empire, their weaponry so outdated, it took only a single garrison to establish Imperial supremacy on this world. Like as not, they had yet to recover from the burst of organized violence launching their liberation.

“Not much here,” Leia murmured, drumming her fingers against the console. “Just generalities. We need to know something more specific ― whether the law is ever actually enforced, and how.”

Luke moved up without hurry, sliding a glance over her shoulder. “Can’t you run a library search?”

“Not from here. They’re still rebuilding the network...”

Trust technology to add another hitch. Han yanked a window open and breathed deeply of the windless air. A slow drop of sweat collected at the center of his chest and trickled downward.

“Don’t forget security,” he said brusquely. “Once word gets around, practically anyone could discover a calling to play red-hot avenger.”

“We came here with an escort,” Leia reminded him tersely. “And the government wouldn’t want―”

“Screw the government!” Han ripped out his comlink. “I’m gonna call Chewie. ‘Least we know we can trust him.”

“Han. Settle down.” The quiet tone cut through his temper without effort, then Luke’s hand was on his arm, closing around it in a gesture of reassurance, not warning.

“Lemme call him anyway,” Han said roughly. “And we’re all gonna sleep better.”

* * *

That jaunty turn of phrase stuck with him half the night, like he’d believed it for so much as a moment. Han spent long hours of darkness listening into a thick, unrevealing quiet, frazzled on the edges by distant snarls of thunder. Stretched out fully dressed atop the covers, two fingers over the hilt of his blaster.

Chewbacca had parked himself in the lounge separating the bedrooms, bowcaster primed at his side. Nothing got past that keen sense of smell, no reason for alarm. What boiled inside him fully deserved the name of overreaction. Down payment for things to come, Han thought sardonically. This was just the beginning.

Sometime during the small hours, he tilted into sleep like he’d misstepped, bolting from it only when Chewie burst through the door.

Wide awake on a gush of adrenaline, Han swung off the bed and staggered to a dazed halt at Chewbacca’s exasperated rumble. High time to get ready for the morning’s session, nothing worse. Shower and get into presentable shape in ten minutes.

They ended up hurrying after Luke and Leia and the rest of the delegation, into another brilliant morning that wore its freshness like a claim to happy endings. Out on the shaded terrace, the Worren clustered in rare agitation.

“Guess they all heard the news,” Han muttered when they caught up.

With their arrival, the flustered congregation regrouped around a different center of attention. From their ranks, the new Worren chancellor stepped forward in full ceremonious array. Which canceled any misguided hopes for business as usual.

She took note of Chewbacca’s looming presence with a short swing of the head while the latecomers approached their seats. “I believe everyone here is aware of the news that transpired last night.”

Her large amber eyes were flecked with green, her cranial bone still dappled with the turquoise shimmers of adolescence. Han wondered uneasily how that little fact would figure into the government’s actions.

“You know how we feel about the Dark Lord of the Sith,” the Chancellor said solemnly, with a nod in Luke’s direction. “He has caused much grief to my people.”

“I understand.”

And there was a resonance in Luke’s tone the Worren couldn’t possibly grasp. Understanding outside the perimeter of abstract outrage, unflinchingly personal.

“His crimes remain unredressed,” she continued, “and while this is so, there can be no peaceful negotiations with a member of his family.”

“Chancellor,” Leia began, “If I may―”

“Please, hear me out.” Her long, bony fingers clasped into the folds of her ornate robe. “My council and I have given much thought to this matter. And while we acknowledge your dedication to the Rebellion against the Empire―” here she turned to Luke, “―we can only offer you the following choice. Either you will have to leave our world, or you must account for your father’s misdeeds before a court of honor.”

“You can’t put him on trial for something he didn’t do,” Han said into the moment’s silence, different customs be damned.

Something close enough to a smile stretched the thin-lipped mouth. “Yes, I understand that your laws aren’t the same as ours,” the Chancellor replied. “We do not expect you to bow to our concept of justice. It is your choice, Luke Skywalker, to leave or to stay. However...” She slid another glance at Han, “let me assure you that there will be no trial, as you call it, and no punishment either. Long ago, the crime of one fell back on the clan in full, and punishment was meted out without distinction. But we’ve grown to acknowledge individual responsibility. Therefore, nothing more is asked than an admission of guilt.”

 _Yeah? How come that sounds just a little too easy?_ Han scanned her face for hints of double-dealing, inch by glossy inch.

Beside him, Luke rose from his seat. “I thank you for offering me a choice,” he said. “Please give me time to consider.”

“Of course. If you require further information about the procedure, Councilor Wyck’cha will be at your disposal.” The Chancellor raised her hands and turned. “All consultations are adjourned until this matter has been resolved.”

Without another word, Luke headed off the terrace, a stooped Worren attaching herself to his heels.

“Chewie, keep an eye on him, okay?” Han muttered over his shoulder, unrepentant when Leia threw him a sharp glance.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said in a lowered voice, snagging his arm.

They stopped in the cobbled courtyard, well out of earshot, where the morning still looked white-washed and innocuous.

“You don’t look worried,” Han commented before she could get a word in.

“It’s a ritual, Han, not a serious trial.” Leia swung round and argued as if to outflank her own apprehensions. “I had a chance to look up some of the available data this morning, and it’s exactly like the Chancellor told us. Only the actual perpetrator is punished, while family members are supposed to admit the guilt and show contrition, that’s all.” She paused, obviously to work the catch out of her voice. “Besides, we don’t know yet if that’s what Luke will choose.”

“No, we don’t,” Han agreed with pointed sarcasm, “but we can make an educated guess.”

“Believe me, I’d much prefer it otherwise, but...”

“But what?”

“The Chancellor clearly has no intentions of letting this interfere with our prospective treaty,” Leia argued with edgy conviction. “She won’t risk a development that could result in hostilities. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have offered Luke a choice.”

“Yeah. Very generous.” Listening to himself, Han caught a note of sulky resentment that he didn’t like, too much personal stuff slipping in that made rational appraisal a far-out fantasy. “You sure there’s no diplomatic trick to shoot this whole thing down?”

“If we already had an agreement with the Worren, Luke would enjoy diplomatic immunity.” Some of Leia’s dismay escaped into a short wave of the hand. “No, there isn’t. It may not look like an informal situation, but legally speaking, it is.”

“Bad timing, huh?” Or excellent timing, from that low-down double-crosser’s point of view.

Han shielded his eyes against the glare and swiveled a look back at the magistrate building. Hardly mid-morning, and the sun was pounding the stones, the back of his shirt damp with perspiration. He scanned the row of glistening swing-doors, the broad steps carved out of sandy rock ― and from that direction, Luke came walking up to them, at the pace of fast resolution.

“That didn’t take long.” Han couldn’t bottle that comment any more than Luke could stop placing himself in the nearest line of fire, it looked like.

Though Leia placed a hand on his arm, like she’d keep him from harm that way, Luke’s expression told Han the whole story. Well, he wasn’t about to let it ride without protest.

“You wanna go through with it, right?”

“I’ve already acknowledged Vader... both in private and before the inquiry board,” Luke said evenly. “I can’t back off from that now.”

“Takin’ on his guilt ain’t the same thing!” Han shot back.

“No. To you and me, and maybe some others, there’s a difference.” Luke took a step away from Leia, wearing that damnable air of unshakable purpose. “To these people, there isn’t, and they won’t be the only ones who feel this way. It’s going to happen again, and if I start running now, where do I stop, and why?”

“It need not happen again,” Leia started. “Not if we―”

“Ever stop to think how this’s gonna look,” Han overrode her, “from the outside? Like you’re guilty just ‘cause you got that accidental connection with someone you never even met ‘til―”

“It’s not accidental,” Luke interrupted, his mind shuttered to the logic of self-preservation as usual. “That’s the whole point. I have a potential that must be similar to what _he_ once had, and that leaves me with a responsibility I can’t ignore. What would you have me do?” There his tone changed, making it a serious question.

Han caught that note of uncertainty, of stretching hard for some kind of balance, and remembered: _I’m not fragile_.

“Meet ‘em on your own terms,” he said stonily. “Don’t let ‘em dictate your choices.”

“These are the terms, Han, whether I like them or not. Sometimes you have to choose sides, even if neither’s exactly what you would prefer. I thought you knew that.”

“There’s always another way.”

From the way Luke’s eyes flashed, Han braced for a sharp retort, but all he said was, “Is there really?” ― and with a nod to Leia, “I need to prepare myself.”

Han watched him go while the sunlight seared with a sting of hard radiation.

When he turned back, Leia gave him a look aimed to the quick. “What is it with you and Luke?”

“Later,” he managed. “Let’s talk about it later, okay?” But he could tell by the flicker in her eyes that he’d already answered the question.

* * *

Luke walked between the stones that stood guardian over silence. The Councilor had opened the gate for him, but stepped back without entering as if she knew what had brought him here. Better than he did.

He took the gravel path that wound in and out and around the memory steles, following it down to the white slab filled top to bottom with deaths from years ago. His view taken up by grainy stone, sand slopes and memories of Tatooine, of the desert as he’d come to know it during his long seclusion in Ben’s house. Dust storms twisting silently inward, around a core of waiting. _Whether I live or die_ ―

He counted two-hundred and thirty-seven names, some of them blurred together by force of the weather, a rasp of fine grains under his fingers when he traced them. From what he’d been told, he had several hours left to prepare himself.

_Ss’ka Darr Twan_  
 _Ss’ka Shrven Yr_

The stone stretched taller than his father had been, the names that reached highest into the battering light barely legible.

_T’ryuk Kn ‘En_  
 _Dr’ych Kn Orrden_  
 _Dr’ych Warwak Rhyt_

A haze spread over the rim of the sky, like curdled air. The surface of the past slipped under his fingers, rapidly cooling where the stone faced away from the sun. Conjuring the rustles and smells of desert night.

_C’ken Darr Aren_  
 _T’chay Ssufal Aren_  
 _who am I_  
 _buried like them in the desert heat and light_

Luke dropped into a cross-legged position beside the stone, into the sunlight that shrank all shadows to dense borders.

 _D’whyk Ss’kan_...

The same date attached to every name. And behind each name, a life that kept its secret from him, except ―

 _my father_...

In all this overflow of recollection, the only living presence, a face and unstoppable agony and the sound of harsh, mechanical breaths. His only point of reference.

Was this how Vader had faced the victims behind these names ― with the coolness of higher purpose, with mechanized detachment? And perhaps he’d fulfilled his legacy this way, with this inability to connect with anyone. Made good on the claim in Vader’s voice that rose past every lock and shield. _My son_...

He fumbled for a memory, delving on a straight path to the buried core. A steely gloom cleaved by hard, lethal brightness. And he plucked at the image, dragged it forth ― Vader’s blade crossing his, a hand’s breadth from the Emperor’s throne ― for a moment tasting heat, anger, shame, the sharp rush that came with his first loss of control. Searing and scorching ―

The snap of implacable barriers jarred him away before he could stop it. Before the image could unravel into a sequence that drowned in blue lightning. Yet through the backwash, he tracked the low ebb of a scream ― riffling somewhere behind the rhythm of his heartbeat, rattling that screen ― and it hadn’t stopped, hadn’t stopped yet, after all this time.

He was breathing hard in the brutal heat. Wherever he searched the shield, it was seamless with the compact energy he’d drawn into himself, too close still to that cutting edge of power. Too efficient. Shutting himself out.

Like he had on Tatooine, in the seesaw of destiny and decision ― _whether I live or die_ ― committing himself only to the near future, enclosed in conditional time. _But if I live_ ―

A thought wide with formless possibilities, stark and bare like the desert horizon and waiting to be explored. Instead, he’d slammed a wall across it. A denial he couldn’t unsay.

* * *

Han surveyed the scene like a battlefield. Soon as he’d found out that the trial had to be wrapped up before dusk ― and he’d damn well call it a _trial_ ‘til he’d been proved wrong ― he’d started looking for Luke. Couldn’t find him anywhere ― Chewie either ― even though he’d checked the unlikeliest places.

When he’d finally run into Councilor Wyck’cha, she’d informed him that Luke was in conference with the Chancellor, to receive final instructions. Time had fizzled out to the smallest margin, and it made Han more aware that he’d never figured out what exactly he’d say to Luke. Sway his mind? Hopeless, once it had been made up. Just reach out then, across that brand new rift, and hope no groundquake would follow the first breaching tremor. Too late for that too, by now.

While Leia and he halted at the top of the visitors’ tribune, Chewbacca came angling through the crowd, solemn natives shrinking politely out of his path.

“Where’ve you been, pal?” Han growled.

Before them, under the brazen sky, hundreds of Worren in earth-colored homespun poured into the theater. An open bowl with rows of seats descending towards the center that simmered with anticipation. Chewbacca leaned down close enough for Han to feel his breath and pointed out that he’d tailed Luke, as per his captain’s orders.

“Yeah, so? You could’ve checked in with me while you were at it,” Han grouched back. “Take your comlink next time.” His temper veered erratically, without any solid target to blast.

“I think we’re supposed to sit here,” Leia murmured. She wore her most bridled look and the high color of bottled-up agitation.

“Yeah ― far as possible from the real action.” Taking stock of the audience, Han noticed that the five bottom rows had been taken up by male Worren, all of them dressed in unusually drab colors.

“They’re the acclaimers,” Leia said with a glance in the same direction. “A form of compensation, I suppose, since males have no say in actual legislation.”

“Found out anything more?” Han dropped down on a bare stone bench in the top row. “Anything useful?”

Until he’d bolted to track Luke down, they’d scoured the magistrate’s archive for additionnal info, and the sheer excess of cryptic, ornate jargon had left Han with suspicions by the plenty.

“Not much. Most of the records were never transferred to digital, much less translated into Basic.”

Han grimaced. The translations they’d pulled up had the ring of clumsy approximations more than anything else. Down in the arena, the councilors marched up in slow procession, arranging themselves into a semicircle of serene white robes.

“What about that supplementary clause, in case the acclaimers refuse to acclaim?” Han asked. “And that part about _enhanced confessions_...”

“I’ve found no reference to―”

A wave of trills and whistles spilled through the round, raising the Worren to their feet in their own version of applause. Below, the Chancellor had entered, decked out in the same arctic white.

“There was no reference,” Leia continued as the noise settled, “to any actual application of that clause. The councilor I spoke to told me that during the centuries their records span, it was enforced less than ten times.”

“How reassuring,” Han muttered, but his attention had taken a sharp plunge to the center of the arena. Flanked by two more councilors, Luke had just arrived, his black outfit in conspicuous contrast with all the flaunted white.

The Chancellor acknowledged him with a bow of the head and signaled for silence. “As a matter of courtesy to our visitors, this court of honor shall proceed in Basic.”

Guttural murmurs swept the theater while Luke dropped to his knees on the sandy ground, his back very straight and his eyes on the audience.

“I hate this,” Han said through his teeth.

Fragments from the files they’d skimmed spun through his head, all the time-honored phrases and gestures. _The repentant shall kneel before the assembly and be addressed thus_...

“Luke Skywalker, son of Darth Vader,” the Chancellor intoned, “what do you plead?”

“I plead guilty,” Luke answered without hesitation.

... _and the venerable truth-finder shall ask_...

“Why do you plead guilty? What crime has been committed?” With a curt gesture, she motioned Luke to stand.

“A crime against your people.” Luke sent a long glance around the theater, slowly passing from one row to the next. “Many families have lost loved ones and must still miss their presence. Two-hundred-thirty-seven were killed.”

The murmurs that went up this time rippled with grief and old anger, fading out slowly when Luke started to recite the names of Vader’s victims.

“Ss’ka Darr Twan, Ss’ka Shrven Yr...”

So he’d spent the past hours memorizing all those names. Han caught an expletive behind his teeth and darted a glance at Leia’s blood-drained profile. Maybe she could see herself in Luke’s place, exposed and caught down under the weight of somebody else’s choices.

Luke went through the names without faltering, even if his tongue tripped over the foreign sounds sometimes, his tone level and dry. Nowhere near as cool as he’d been during the inquiry, but hardly expressive.

Doing the best he could, Han thought ― and it’d better be enough for the Worren ― rooted motionless under the scalding sun, like the slightest distraction could throw him. Two-hundred-thirty-seven, and each name pronounced with unyielding effort, striking close echoes off the stone.

“Nothing,” Luke finished at last, “will replace the lives that were lost, or ease your sorrow. But I do share it, and I wish there was a way to take away your pain.”

After a short pause, the Chancellor shook herself from inertia, and Han knew what was coming, the decisive question that would conclude this whole damn business. “Honored fathers, brothers, and consorts, do you acquit the guilt that has been humbly laid at your feet?”

The question fell into thickened silence, the sky heavy with deep blue afternoon. Nothing stirred, besides a brief flutter of movement among the councilors’ white crescent. Han balled his hands tight and aimed a glare at the bottom rows, adrenaline glistening on the nerve’s edge. _Acclaim, damn you_.

Finally, a voice rose from the bottom row. “I am not convinced.”

“What?” Leia leaned forward as if to snatch something back.

Even across the distance, Han could see the Chancellor start, clearly taken off stride. “We heard you. That is one voice―”

“I am not convinced.” Someone in the second row had pushed to his feet, joined by a third voice.

“Very well.” The Chancellor had caught herself and leveled a stern tone at the querulous males. “It is your privilege to reject the contrition the repentant has demonstrated, but bear in mind that he is not of our race, and his expressions of regret differ from ours.”

“Do they not shed tears like we do?” A fourth Worren bounced up like dependable trouble. “My mother’s mother and all members of her household perished at the Sith Lord’s hands. And I am not convinced.”

 _Oh, hell_. They’d wanted an emotional spectacle, a hair-tearing, blubbering show of contrition from the innocent. From Luke, of all people.

“That’s enough!” Han was on his feet, Chewbacca’s vicious snarl resounding through his bone marrow together with the clamor that charged the ranks.

Luke stood silent and rigid while one voice after the next joined that abrasive chorus, a catalog of losses and calamities battering him with spiteful righteousness. A carved image of defeat, the Chancellor took the barrage while a councilor whispered hurriedly in her ear.

“You are invoking the necessity of enhanced confession,” she said, resigned, no matter her assertive tones.

A chill crawled down Han’s spine, driven by the rumble of affirmative noise from the crowd, furious disbelief hard on its heels. All of the madness hitting home, one event after the next, a high-speed reel of absurdities ― and now the Chancellor had nothing better to say than “so be it” ― and the assembly broke up while Luke disappeared within the cloud of robed councilors.

“Come on!” Han grabbed Leia’s arm, jerking her from white-faced shock. “We gotta stop this now.”

Though Chewie carved a path for them through the hubbub, by the time they made the arena only a single councilor remained.

“We’d like to be informed about the next steps,” Leia accosted her, no need to raise her voice when it bit like a rapier.

Councilor Wyck’cha turned ponderously. “I regret to tell you that this part of the proceedings is closed to the common public, only the acclaimers and the members of―”

“Perhaps,” Leia broke in, as impatient as Han had ever seen her, “but the court of honor doesn’t usually involve repentants from a different race either. These are special circumstances, Councilor.”

“Yes indeed, that is true―”

“I’m sure the Chancellor would not want to cause an affront by excluding us,” Leia said icily.

The councilor blinked, a milky white membrane sliding back and forth over yellow pupils. “Please follow me. I shall take you to her.”

“And fast!” Han snapped, his pulse pounding in time with the run of seconds, high up in his throat.

* * *

The room smelled of dry, ancient stone, its length bisected by a thick glassite pane. Shadows crowded on the other side.

Luke took up his place without hesitation, observing his own lack of reaction with impartial interest. Perhaps he’d seen this coming, perhaps with part of his mind he’d even welcomed this breach of barriers. He closed his eyes to appraise the supple leather of the manacles that clasped his wrists. A reliable hold. Surrounded by rasping whispers in a language he didn’t understand, the cough of outdated equipment rattling into activity after long disuse.

He bowed his head when someone touched his shoulder and tugged his tunic’s collar out of the way. Several nodes of coolness settled against the back of his neck, the base of his skull, like bright marks, seeking a direct link with synaptic pathways.

He breathed in a steady, focused rhythm. Pain was energy, and he could draw on it, redirect it to split the shield. Gather it in, this time.

“I’m ready.”

A great clarity spread in his nerves with every breath he drew, sharpened the shuffle of footsteps and the thud of a door falling shut. He straightened to watch the clandestine movement on the other side of the glass. A flurry of white cloth like a clumsy ruffling of wings.

They were waiting to hear him scream.

The first jolt pierced his nervous system, and he caught his breath, let it run its course and absorbed the rush of defiance that passed through his body. Sweat sprang to his skin, a cooling white mist, but that was all. The flushing energy dispersed too fast, and he needed the break to bring automatic muscular response under control. To stop himself from tensing up.

The next jolt struck harder ― jarring though he’d expected it ― and threw up a flare of blue lightning in his inner vision. _No_. The force of it rattled his teeth. _I can’t_ ―

A dark distaste buried in his throat, clenching without sound. It would take more, to liberate the scream behind it. Much more.

* * *

A long flight of steps delved into the rock on which the magistrate complex had been built. Han could’ve sworn Councilor Wyck’cha was dawdling on purpose, though maybe nothing but age and lack of concern slowed her down. His skin burned with impatience. Things were moving ahead too fast ― and not in the right direction, claimed the plummeting feeling in his gut.

“What exactly does an enhanced confession entail?” Leia asked, grappling for control and comfort through knowledge, the way she always had.

“The procedure was devised to enhance the repentant’s capacity to sympathize with the pain that was caused.” Wyck’cha shambled on down a wide corridor lit by a string of glowspheres.

“And _how_ is it enhanced?” Leia insisted.

Walking up close behind and pressing for speed, Han counted the glowspheres that bobbed by to keep his temper leashed, a gray smear of hapless insects falling to dust on the bottom of each. Wyck’cha took her own sweet time to answer.

“Through carefully administered neural shocks.”

Chewie’s groan of protest launched the words past unbelief and struck up a firework of fury in the higher faculties of Han’s brain.

“Say that again?” He rounded on Wyck’cha who faltered with another confounded blink. “Nobody told us you’d _torture_ him! You gotta stop this at once!”

“General Solo.” The Councilor sidestepped him with sudden agility. “I assure you that torture has nothing to do with it.” She hurried on to a set of armored portals, guarded by a pair of male Worren in bulky leather garb.

“Yeah, pull the other one ‘n see if I’ll laugh!” Han grabbed her arm. On the edge of his vision, a pair of plasma guns swung up slowly, like the guards had to remember their use first. “I’ve been through that kinda treatment myself, so don’t go telling me what it’s like, goddamnit!”

Blistering red beams stabbing through closed lids, every single nerve lighting up into raw fire ―

“General, it is done merely to facilitate a true confession.”

“He _can’t_!” Han barked, “Listen to me!” ― all but shaking her when a gun barrel poked into his line of sight. Chewie growled at his shoulder and Leia seized his elbow, suddenly in cahoots as they pried him off the Worren. Blind fury rushed him so hard, he could barely breathe.

“I shall inform the Chancellor,” Wyck’cha rattled out, a little breathless, the guards retreating with ferocious glowers, “please wait here.” And the portals shut on her.

“Just a ritual, huh?” Han wheeled to face Leia. “And how’s this more humane than actual punishment?”

She speared him with a furious look. “What do you mean, _he can’t_?”

Han needed a moment to let his thoughts fall into place, to push past the resurgence of memories and outrage. “You must’ve noticed. How Luke won’t show any emotion.” Short of breath, his mind taking off on different tracks, an icy crawl of fear right behind. “It’s a ― a survival strategy. Like playing dead. Only he can’t snap out of it anymore.”

With that adrenaline sharpness of perception, Han caught a faint electric hum from somewhere that grated out a warning. _Gods, it’s already started_...

“Yes, I had noticed,” Leia began, but another thought broke in, triggered like a shock grenade.

“Look, if they manage to break through ― or if _he_ does ― there’s no tellin’ what’ll happen... what it’s gonna _do_ to him!” Han gulped in a quick breath. “What it’s gonna turn loose.”

Leia shook her head, denial leaping to the front. “What are you talking about?”

“Luke’s shielded himself, and he’s been losin’ his grip on the Force ― don’t ask me how any of this works, ‘cause I don’t know either!” Han threw out both hands. “I’m only repeating what he told me. He said he can’t even tell anymore when he’s drawing on the goddamn Dark Side!”

Leia whispered something he didn’t catch, her lips trembling, then pressed together like a bloodless scar.

“This ain’t safe for _anyone_ ,” Han finished, listening hard for sound. Anything from that blasted dungeon ―

“And we’ll get him out of it,” Leia murmured, just as the portals unsealed again.

“Please enter.”

Councilor Wyck’cha hadn’t half finished when Han lunged past her, into the dimness of an overcrowded chamber, and the first thing that caught him in the gut was a sound crackling over invisible speakers.

Harsh, deep breaths, going in and out in a struggling cadence.

And from the blur of grays on the right, the flash of a monitor, busy with spiderlines that accounted for brainwaves, heartbeat ―

“General Solo.”

The Chancellor’s voice, but he couldn’t spare a second for her. Above the heads of the crowd glistened a strip of glass, frosted with fluorescent lighting from the space beyond.

Han jostled towards it, through the press of indignant bodies and humble robes, until a quick breath froze up in his chest. Hell’s dues. And here he’d thought that maybe he’d paid them off by now.

Arms spread out, Luke had been manacled to a neutral plasteel surface, strained features laid bare in the glacial light. Slender pipes wound out from his neck, hooked up to some ancient electronic monster. He’d squeezed his eyes shut, a brief spasm tossing his head back ―

― and it was more than Han could bear to watch. “Stop it, stop it right now!” He grabbed the first acclaimer by the front of his robe. “What d’you think you’re gonna get here? Tell me that!”

He shoved the Worren into the gawking throng, fingers catching with sure instinct on the hilt of his blaster.

“Your friend was appraised of the proceedings.” The Chancellor emerged with Leia at her side, like she had to be towed to the center of the action.

“Oh yeah?” Han snarled. “D’you tell him about this, and that you’ll keep at him ‘til it _kills_ him, if you can’t wring a goddamn tear?”

“This treatment isn’t harmful,” the Worren protested, but she looked troubled.

“You’re forgettin’ that you people are thicker-skinned than we are!” Han took a step forward ― each word shoved in her face ― and acknowledged the corrosive sting of irony. If Luke hadn’t armored himself, he wouldn’t be here. “If he doesn’t give you what you want, what’re you gonna do, how long’re you gonna keep this up?”

“It doesn’t usually take longer than the fall of dusk,” a councilor supplied from the rear.

“Look, he’s a Jedi. If he should lose control over his abilities―”

“We have to ask you to reconsider,” Leia interfered, perhaps to cover the menace in his tone, but her voice was laced with warnings of a different kind.

“I cannot change the laws.” Clearly at a loss for options, the Chancellor’s round-eyed look begged for understanding and assistance.

For all of two seconds, Han appraised the benefit of holding a blaster to her head. In the stymied silence, he could hear Luke breathe. “All right,” he said thickly. “How about ― can somebody else take his place?”

“Only a member of the same clan could.” Wyck’cha resumed her place at the Chancellor’s side.

“But―” Leia closed her mouth on some impulsive reply and flinched a little, as if she’d forgotten.

Before she could toss her life’s work down the drain of one moment, Han made a grab for her hand, squeezing hard ― there had to be another way ― and glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a shudder pass through Luke’s frame.

“Ss’ka Darr Twan, Ss’ka Shrven Yr...”

He started reciting the names again, trembling, but reciting the goddamn names. A crack in his voice when it bled out of him, jagged enough to break skin. Han swallowed against the bite of something more toxic than rage.

“Let’s work this out.” He’d recovered his voice, some of it, knifed through the middle and talking on autopilot. “He’s a Jedi, and you didn’t give him enough time to prepare for this whole―”

“Does your law allow for a break in the procedures?” Leia picked up the cue before he could bungle this attempt with a string of profanities.

“Yes, it does, if there is sufficient reason,” Wyck’cha answered.

“We never intended to cause any harm,” the Chancellor professed in earnest, throwing the door wide open.

“Well, there is a good reason here.” Leia’s voice steadied as she warmed to her argument. “A Jedi’s mind doesn’t always work exactly as ours do. He needs time to meditate. Only then will you receive the confession you require.”

Han buried a flicker of mindless protest at the back of his head. _Whatever works_. Once they’d set Luke free, they could make a break for it.

“Yes.” The Chancellor nodded and dived for the loophole. “That can be arranged.”

“He’ll have to remain in custody,” someone grumbled.

“Now that could pose a problem.” Leia didn’t miss a beat. “A busy place like this is a distraction. You see, a Jedi can sense those around him, their thoughts and sentiments, and he has to shield against it. But that in turn limits his ability to express the contrition you seek.”

“Probably the reason why he couldn’t really concentrate the first time round,” Han backed her up. “Don’t you have a safe place somewhere outside the capital, somewhere secluded?”

“Yss’var island,” Wyck’cha murmured, watching them thoughtfully.

“A small island off the eastern coast,” the Chancellor explained. “My predecessors retreated there in times of crisis, to contemplate the needs of our people.”

“Let me take him there.” Against his palm, Han felt Leia’s stifled reaction, but then she linked their fingers tightly. “My word of honor, we’re not gonna try to run.” Straightfaced, while a dozen escape scenarios unrolled in his mind.

At his back, the room buzzed with dissent, a demented background to Luke’s tortured breathing. His mind folded around that inescapable sound.

“That is acceptable.” The Chancellor reclaimed authority with raised volume and a glare at the mutinous acclaimers. “An escort will see you safely to the island.”

“Thanks.” Han forced the word out through his teeth. “Now ― can we get Luke outta there?”

* * * * *

Out over the sea, his mind settled by grudging degrees. Han tugged the steering lever and breathed deep of the briny air that whipped cold and cleansing past the glider’s windshield. The last daylight splayed through the shallow water, seeping around banks of pale sand in the sound’s glassy green. Beside him, Luke had eased back into the passenger seat, his eyes closed. Exhausted, but far from relaxed.

 _No wonder. Like as not, they’ve just added to his stock of nightmares_. Han’s jaw hardened at the stark image that’d peeled a strip off reality. _And mine_.

The memory was bound to keep him company a long time. How Luke had sagged against him when they’d snapped off the manacles, fighting for balance through the first shaky steps.

“I’m sorry...”

“Not your fault, kid” ― and the room went blurry for a moment.

 _‘Least it’s over now_.

From behind, a shuttle’s drone curtailed their freedom. Still, their armed escort would veer off once they’d reached the island. Han narrowed his eyes at the cluster of dark humps in the turquoise distance. Not as far off the coast as he’d hoped, but he could trust Chewie to swoop in and out fast enough to throw the Worren for a loop. A mere minute later, he slowed the glider for the landing approach.

Remnants of sunset edged the rocks in thready amber and glanced off a pale dome. The Chancellor’s retreat sat in a ring of cliffs, but somebody had gone through the trouble to coax vegetation from scattered patches of open ground. As the craft lowered to the small landing pad, Han caught a whiff of elderblossom and _yssami_ leaves. He cut the drive.

Luke pushed himself upward and got off mechanically, like a sleepwalker stumbling towards some phantom target ― until his voice gave lie to the notion.

“It didn’t work.”

In the breezy quiet, Han could hear the shuttle’s hum head inland. He rounded the glider in quick strides. “What didn’t work?”

Ready to reach him a hand for support, but Luke had straightened out of weariness. A mixture of grass and moss covered the ground in thick pads that dipped under their steps.

“I was hoping I could use pain to break through the shield.” Luke paused, his face averted to the inflow of dusk. “I need that kind of raw energy to get past it. I tried, but―”

“Sounds like a good way to commit suicide to me!” Han slung the words at him with random fury and wasn’t even sorry, too much pressure built up to keep it tongue-tied anymore. “How come you can never take the easy way out?”

“And you think there is one?”

 _Yep, and she’s got all the juice to outrun those Worren junkpods_ , Han thought, but there’d be time later to let Luke in on his plan. Couldn’t risk to hightail it just yet, with their escort barely out of shouting range.

“C’mon,” he said roughly. “Let’s go inside.”

Without thinking about it, he’d expected a bigger show of luxury, but the condo turned out just a cut above austere. A scatter of hand-woven rugs adding color to white-washed walls, stone floor and a basic set of no-nonsense furniture.

“Reminds me of Ben’s house,” Luke said from the doorstep. “On Tatooine.”

“Yeah?” Han gave the only other door a short push and stuck his head inside. The curve of a large, circular tub gleamed in the dimness. “Can’t imagine he had a ‘fresher quite like this.”

“He didn’t.” Luke had moved up close behind, trailing like a loose satellite.

“Feel okay?” Han asked, and instantly congratulated himself for picking the dumbest of all possible questions. A medic had checked Luke out before they’d left, and according to the Worren, there shouldn’t be any aftereffects, but what the hell did they know?

The brief, cramped nod didn’t convince him otherwise. From the way Luke balanced himself, all the muscles in his back were still wound up tight against the next shock, the next white-out. And that notion kept Han from laying his hand where it hurt, to ease off the tension. Most likely, Luke would flinch at the lightest touch right now.

He reached for the lighting panel instead. “Why don’t you take a bath and relax for a bit? ‘S gonna do you good.”

A cabinet in the corner spilled over with towels, soaps and a collection of the scented oils the Worren used to sleek their skin.

“Thanks.” Luke pushed his hair back and glanced around, lost in the wilderness of ordinary things. “I guess I’ll do that.”

Han turned on the water ― too solicitous and clumsy at it, but a sudden, mindless gratitude pushed for some kind of outlet ― before he took himself to the door. “I’ll be outside.”

 

By the time he heard Luke emerge from the ‘fresher, dusk had drowned the patch of garden with its scruffy trees and shrubs planted along the deep folds in the rock. Seated on a lumpy moss bank, Han could see narrow strips of water that shimmered brighter than the sky.

He leaned back on his elbows when Luke joined him. Stars were breaking out in pinpricks overhead. “Ready to go?”

“Go? I thought we were supposed to stay here a whole day.”

“All I gotta do is give Chewie a call, and we’re outta here.”

Luke shook his head. “What about the negotiations?”

“Leia can handle it. And believe me, she’ll prefer dealing with a diplomatic crisis over seeing you dragged back to that fusty dungeon.” ‘Course, there’d been no time to discuss their next move, but the memory of Leia’s white-knuckled determination made short work of every doubt. “Anyway,” Han finished, “you don’t have to go back. What d’you say?”

A long pause opened into varied misgivings, all of them panning out when Luke said, “I have to deal with it, Han. I can’t put it off forever, and it’s something I can’t run from.”

“The shield.”

“Yes.”

Han sucked in a long breath before he could trust himself to answer. Another grand slam down to entropy, or Luke’s hell-bent stubbornness, or both ― and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen this one coming. “So what’re you gonna do about it? You’ve got less’n twenty hours.”

“I know.” Hands pushed into the pockets of his pants, Luke took a step towards the silent rank of _yssami_ trees. “I have to figure out a way to dismantle something I set up myself.” Derision cut through his quiet tones. “And since it restricts my access to the Force...”

“You can’t use it to blast the thing apart,” Han finished for him.

Luke acknowledged that with a stiff little shrug. “I need to be alone for a while.”

On his feet in a split second, Han planted himself in the middle of Luke’s path, a spark set to a very short fuse. “You don’t have _time_ to deal with it alone!” he snapped. “Not anymore. Why d’you think you have to anyway?”

“Because I’m responsible,” Luke said in all sobriety. “I made the wrong decision.”

“Yeah, but for all I can tell, it’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to yourself ― it just ain’t like you at all! So don’t tell me things wouldn’t’ve been different if you’d had a real choice.” Han stopped, nearly run out of breath. This close to the trees, soft rustles of foliage drifted up like interference, contrived to calm him down. “I still don’t get it, y’know.”

“It seemed like... the only solution that made sense.” Luke paced a few steps, into the shadows that pooled around the grove. “Part of it was that I remembered Yoda’s warnings. _Anger, fear, aggression lead to the Dark Side_. And he was right. But he never told me about love and grief and wanting to―” He broke off, the past rejected with a terse gesture. “The Jedi of the old order never surrendered to passion. I could see why.”

 _Well, I don’t_ , Han thought belligerently, _but I can guess why the whole Jedi outfit fell apart real fast_.

“What’s the other part?” he asked.

“That I didn’t know how to take it all. On Endor... I just couldn’t imagine how I’d ever be at peace again.”

Luke’s shoulders settled into a tight line of defense, but something in his voice lashed out at Han, and he couldn’t stand it. “So it’s down to Kenobi and Yoda ― and Vader ‘n Palpatine. They pushed you that far, can you see that? How does that make it your own damned fault?”

“I didn’t want to be a victim,” Luke said, very quietly. “I had to take control somehow.”

 _Their chosen tool_ , Han recalled, cold fury balling up tight inside him. And he caught himself half-hoping those stuck-up Jedi Masters would choose to materialize right now and account for this spectacular foul-up.

“Half the time,” he went on, “they left you in the dark, and for the rest of it, they tried their level best to make you into a killer to match Vader. No anger, no fear ― what are you, a robot? They’re healthy reactions, damnit!” He swallowed, his voice so loud it rebounded between the cliffs. “No passion,” he added thickly. “Bet they didn’t like it much when you went after us ‘n came to Bespin.”

“Yoda warned me against leaving.” Luke bowed his head, another weight adding itself. “Ben did, too. He told me he couldn’t interfere...”

“Now that’s rich! You’re not supposed to care or have a mind of your own, and if you do, they’ll just sit back ‘n disclaim responsibility!” Han threw up his hands. “And _that’s_ what makes you a Jedi? You gotta prove you can let your friends die without batting a lash? And what about Leia? They must’ve known about her, who she is ― how could they leave _her_ to Vader?”

“I never had a chance to ask them. Ben only gave me the basic facts, after Yoda died.”

Resentment seized tight around Han’s stomach, but he couldn’t shoulder Luke’s anger for him, all the rage at a life crushed into the mold of destiny. “Your teachers. Your father,” he flared. “Matter of fact, I’m startin’ to think that Vader was the most honest with you!”

“They must’ve been looking at the bigger picture,” Luke countered after a moment, considering with impersonal fairness. “Even if their decisions don’t always make sense to us, that doesn’t mean they didn’t intend to serve the greater good.”

“Maybe not, but _your_ life sure wasn’t at the center of their friggin’ big picture!” Han swung a galled look across the cliffs that bit dark into the sky. “Y’know something? The only thing old Ben ever told you that made any kinda sense was _trust your feelings_. So he couldn’t live up to it himself, but what the hell ― at least he had that one bright idea!”

He turned back on the edge of the grove, temper simmering down to the embers of naked grief. “No wonder you think you gotta do it all alone.”

Venting all that fury had left him near lightheaded but it hadn’t pried this deadlock apart. A twist of wind ruffled the tree beside him and sent a handful of dry leaves skittering across the ground. Emptiness stalked up from the shadowed side of sea. “Guess that leaves just you ‘n me, kid.”

A dead end, here ― between the cliffs and the water and no maps to navigate by ― opening a crack, when Luke met his eyes. “What do you think we should do?”

“If we don’t bail out, they’ll put you through the same thing again tomorrow.” Distant like the surf beating the rocks, curses stirred in some crevice of Han’s mind. “I’d do it for you if I could.”

“Han...” Luke’s stillness broke with a short step forward, like he’d meet him on his own grounds.

“But they won’t let me, so you gotta let me help you, okay? Don’t be so goddamn mulish about it.”

“Listen to yourself, Han.” Out of nowhere, a glint of amusement eased past the doubt in Luke’s eyes. “Remember how you wanted to settle things with Jabba all by yourself, even though it wasn’t your fault that you still owed him the money?”

“Things’ve changed since then.” Han stopped, grappling for a handhold in the past. “I know what it’s like, Luke, wanting to take charge of your life again.” And now he was pacing too, a coiled spring wound up around those six lost months.

“When I came out of the carbon freeze... how d’you think I felt when I couldn’t so much as stay upright without help? Scared the hell outta me.” Sound and touch and smell, each a jab through a burning haze, lacerating his senses. “But at the same time, I didn’t want to keep myself... apart anymore. Not when you’d all come for me. Made a big difference.”

From the memory sheered a sharp, disturbing smell ― like burned insulation, or burned skin ― and with that phantom sensation Luke’s hand clasped his arm.

“Looks like that’s one lesson you still gotta learn,” Han finished. “Or learn again.”

“For a while, it felt...” Sudden loss for words knit up Luke’s brows, too clearly an effort to retrieve a piece of the wreckage. “Like I’d come out of a different kind of hibernation, once we’d rescued you. Just to have you back.”

Wrong cue. Han wrestled with the impulse to pull him close and take cover with false comfort. He glanced down at the hand on his arm, made himself say, “Don’t do that ― not for my sake.” Words scratching in his throat, just like they had in the dark of Jabba’s palace. “Not if it doesn’t mean a thing to you.”

Luke shook his head, a shadow movement in the twilight. “It does. It... reminds me.”

A narrow limit marked with accidental precision.

Han raised a hand to trace the spidery scars that curved along Luke’s cheekbone. The touch at counterpoint with the beginning, when he’d touched right there. The memory glittered bright with Hoth’s snowpack and came alive under his fingertips. _Love now_...

“All these weeks.” Luke closed his eyes. “I never meant to keep you waiting.”

“What’s a couple weeks?” Han dropped his hand to Luke’s shoulder, gripping hard under the sway of recollection. “Remember Ord Mantell? You think I can’t wait this long?”

But time was down to less than twenty hours. His hand fell to his side, a forced retreat to the margins of reason.

He took a couple of steps towards the house, across the rise and fall of groomed soil ― “we gotta work this out somehow” ― and dropped down on an overgrown bank. Waiting for Luke to join him. From here, he wouldn’t give another inch. Straightforward facts first. “Tell me how it works ‘n what you’ve done to bring that shield down.”

“I’ve searched it, many times, but I can’t get any leverage.” Luke sat down beside him and pulled up his knees, a hand shoved angrily into his hair. “I think I must have blocked the very capacity I need to remove it.”

Trapped in a closed loop of contradictions. Out of answers, Han rubbed his neck and looked up, the nightsky sweating it with him in those glistening spatters of light.

 _Cause and effect_ , he told himself. _There’s gotta be a loose end somewhere_.

“You said it all started on Tatooine. What was it like?”

“I had dreams. Every night. I have dreams now.” Luke pressed his fingertips to his temple ― against something savage trapped there, beating out time with an anxious flicker of pulse. Struggling to take wing.

“Some things are slippin’ through, y’know.” Han watched the hand sink away, curling tight around a riddle that unthreaded itself by increments. A nervous impulse flashed when Luke gripped his fingers together.

“No matter what you think,” Han went on, “that shield ain’t perfect. Like... when the Palace guard blasted me.” No objections, not yet, while the memory of Luke’s cry coursed hot and cold through his bloodstream. “Sure you really want to take it down? Maybe that’s the key.”

Luke released a harsh breath, and with it, a confession fumbled out. “I don’t know what’s behind it.”

And that had to scare him.

“What if—” Han paused again, but the notion didn’t lose momentum. “What if _that’s_ what’s keeping it up? You’re afraid. Afraid what’s gonna happen when you let it all come.”

“How could I be afraid, when I’ve blocked everything else?”

Han pulled up his shoulders, a tingle of adrenaline preceding his answer. “Instinct. Think about it. You’re not completely in control of yourself, and you know it.” An incidental clue jangled in the background of that sharp-edged memory, the sound of splintering glass. “Back on Coruscant ― remember what you felt when you smashed the shebang in the ‘fresher?”

“Loneliness. Anger.” Luke shook his head. “And if I take the shield down, it’s all going to break free. Do you really want to risk that? The last time―” Suspicion ran into abrupt silence.

“Yeah, what?”

“I killed the Palace guard.” The memory roughened Luke’s voice, squeezed it into a tight whisper. “Before that... I nearly killed my own father.”

“’Cause he ‘n Palpatine were playing headgames with you,” Han countered, temper churning again, “tryin’ to get to you any which way.”

“What if I lash out at _you_ this time?” On his feet in mid-sentence, Luke fell into a fast stride forward and whipped back around. “What then, Han?”

The lithe frame wired on potent energy, eyes intense in the thready light. For a moment he stared down the core of truth, and Han could almost see it race up and charge him ― everything Luke could be ― close enough to sculpt that mobile outline with his hands.

“Tell me about it,” he asked, a deliberate push that tightened his gut. “When Vader took you to the Emperor―”

“I can’t!” A telltale edge in Luke’s voice.

“See? It’s all there. Just listen to yourself.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“You think I should be afraid of you?” Han made a point of unfolding his arms, relaxed into the bedrock of solid conviction. “C’mere, Luke.”

When Luke squatted before him, he reached for his hands and brought them together between his own. Cold tension drained away slowly in the shelter of his grip. “We’ll handle it. You’d sooner hurt yourself than you’d hurt me.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know ‘cause that’s how it is for me.” He flung his arm around Luke’s neck for a rough, awkward embrace, his mouth buried between blond strands. Too much broken loose with the sudden catch in his pulse, but that was part of the bargain ― “’cause I love you” ― like that unspent, aching want that rasped in his voice, “and maybe you don’t really remember what it was like, but I think you loved me ― back then. And maybe it’s still there.” He straightened, angled himself back, his hands resting without pressure on Luke’s arms. “Maybe all we can do is reach for it, together.”

Past denial, Luke held his eyes. “I want to.”

What they were doing here could rip the ground open under their feet, but anticipation burst in on Han, heated and crazy as hope. _We’ll be whole again_. Impossible promises bouncing up, the kind he’d labeled sentimental nonsense in the past, but he said it anyway. “I’ll catch you.”

A small start under his hands, and it brought a glitter to Luke’s eyes. “Then I’m ready to jump.”

“Yeah ― reckless, that’s you.” His tone far from light, far from casual, but it served to untie the knot in his throat. Han sat back and folded his legs up. “Let’s take it in stride, okay? Start out with the things you recall and take it from there... What Ben told you, about trusting your feelings, remember that?”

Luke dipped his head, a small loosening motion before he settled. No sound, except for the rhythm of the sea.

“How’d it feel, back then?”

 

 _Electric_.

A frisson chasing through the pit of his stomach with the kick and the wild thrill of speed, gone again in a heartbeat. Luke closed himself around the memory and followed it down to the quiet of an unfamiliar cabin.

 _Grief is as much a part of life as every other emotion_ , Ben told him, the wisdom of hindsight at odds with the sharp lines around his mouth.

“He talked about his master. About... loss.”

Low and disconsolate, an old man’s voice from the dark. Stirring up a resonance Luke knew he couldn’t bear. “I tried so hard not to think about Owen and Beru.”

“I noticed.” Han’s voice overlaid the image that resolved itself in magnified detail. From the other side of the maintenance pit, watchful hazel eyes studied him with mockery and a lazy kind of interest. A keepsake he’d carried around for years.

“Not that you told me anything,” Han added. “I got that from the things you didn’t say.”

“Ben asked me if I knew what I felt,” Luke continued, “and I didn’t. Not then.” Somewhere behind his own pulse lingered the thrums of the Falcon’s engines, the rush of discovery that’d poured headlong into his body. “I couldn’t keep up with the pace of it all... I’d barely caught hold of one thing, then the next turned everything upside down again. Ben gave me directions, but he didn’t answer my questions.”

A gentle sweep of regret and acceptance traced itself across the distance of years, a coming separation suspended in the gap between their bunks.

“I think Ben realized that he couldn’t be what he’d hoped to be for me. That he couldn’t guide me very far. Except―”

 _Stretch out with your feelings_. Buried in the memory, the sharp brilliance of the Force flared fever-bright, found him untainted, a promise. Wide as the starfields that spilled in atomic strands around the Falcon. He breathed easier, with that memory stirring under his skin.

When he looked up, the start of a crooked smile was joined uncertainly to Han’s watchful glance.

“You see something I don’t?” Luke asked softly.

“Maybe.” Han shrugged, incredible warmth in his eyes. “Though all I see is you.” Then his glance shifted aside and swept across to the clustering trees. “You, um, wanna tell me ‘bout us? Back at the beginning...”

 

 _Confused_.

Edgy and confident and about to explode for frustration ― too much tangled together and fit with effort into the stark necessities of Rebel life. Luke glanced down at his hands, fingertips set together against the flow of volatile energies.

“I wanted you so much. I’d lie awake at night and couldn’t stop wondering...”

Memories played themselves out in slow, seductive ripples, glistened along a fever curve that patterned hours in darkness. Brimmed with the sight of Han, the long body poised for action, or sprawled with effortless, casual grace.

“I noticed the way you were looking at me sometimes,” Luke said, “and after a time I convinced myself that it meant what I thought it did.”

A charge that caught him defenseless, until he’d stopped questioning, stopped fighting. Turning the secret over in his mind, facets of a puzzle that glittered in the depth of each lonely night.

“But you never did anything about it,” Han returned. “Not until Ord Mantell.”

 _Not until... Coruscant_. Threads of sinuous, tantalizing heat curled into his body and quickened his breathing. “It was... the thought of what would follow that held me back. The way I’d have to leave in the morning and pretend there wasn’t more.”

“Couldn’t settle for less than everything.”

“No, I couldn’t.” Luke closed his eyes. “When you came to see me in sickbay...”

All the time in the world crawling soft and galvanic on the inside of his skin as he settled in to wait ― for everything. “After that... there couldn’t’ve been anyone else.”

A rustle of movement beside him, sharp with protest, “Hell, Luke―”

“No, it’s all right. It was... beautiful.”

There and present, on the outer limit of his senses, the moment’s bright edge cut unexpectedly. _Gods, I want it back_... He reached for Han, unthinking, and laced their fingers to convince himself ―

Here. Solid and real. But there was more to come, dragged from that breathless space inside him.

“We can’t stop now.”

“What’s next?” Han released his hand, a hidden conflict dragging at the gesture, just like it had that day.

“Dagobah.”

 

 _Afraid_.

Afraid to fall asleep and fall through that trap-door in the middle of his own mind. The humid, earthy scents of the swamp pressing in, the night-air thick with restless wings. Hour after hour, he kept his eyes fixed to the waver of light across the cob walls, until Yoda’s fire slumped into a heap of glowing ash.

“Yoda said he’d teach me fear, but I wonder if he realized what shape it would take.” Luke hunched his shoulders forward and ran his fingers through the moss. “Perhaps he knew. He showed me how to open my mind to the future, but he didn’t tell me what to expect.”

“That... vision?”

“Yes.”

Inches from him, a spider crept across dry foliage, every line crystal clear just before it fractured into light ― and reality collapsed. Swallowed up into knowledge that invaded the most private region of his mind.

“I can’t explain how it feels...”

Loss of gravity and self, a split-second flight across images, sounds, sensations ― until it seized his body in a thick, icy wave of adrenaline.

“What I saw and heard and felt didn’t match, but I knew it was you, and Leia...” His throat closed up, refusing the words. “I heard you scream.”

Trailing up behind his rough whisper, from a closed door that would burst open into nightmare. He pushed away from it, levered up for a breath of the cool, slicing air. _Help them you could, but you would destroy all for which they’ve fought and suffered_. Yoda’s voice drowned in the rush of wind and the sea, but a fissure ran through the middle of his mind.

“They could have told me then!” he said abrasively. “They knew where I was going, and if they worried that I couldn’t handle the truth, why’d they let me go unprepared?”

Han shook his head, his jaw set around stifled anger.

“They gave me plenty of warnings, but they didn’t tell me why!” A sharp, gut-level friction stalked him across to the cliffs and back down the rugged slope. “If they thought Vader would turn me to the Dark Side, why’d they give him the chance?”

“What if they’d told you?” Han asked.

“I still would’ve left.” He paused, testing the thought. “Maybe I would have refused to believe them, I don’t know.”

Impossible to rearrange the past, even within the confines of his mind, all of it too close on his heels. Tearing at him. The truth that slammed him backwards, closed around him at a suffocating speed, until his choices narrowed to one kind of death and another. _Let go_ ―

“They let me fall.” His voice crossed a hollow distance, resounding through the sheer drop just before his feet. “Maybe Yoda had decided that I wasn’t Jedi material after all.”

The memory opened into vertigo that clutched at his stomach, and wild pain raced up from his wrist. He pressed his arm against his middle and pushed the hand up under his armpit, getting a hold of himself.

Still falling.

 _Anything to stop this_...

“Luke.”

He narrowed his mind to the sound of Han’s voice, every muscle strung tight by the violent urge to withdraw. Back away from this brink. Countless sketchy seams coming unraveled too fast.

“After that...” Han prompted, his voice low and dry.

“What do you think?” Hoarse, as if he’d shouted.

“Tell me.”

 

 _Cold_.

On Tatooine. Absurd.

“I had a purpose, a life. Then, I had nothing. Except...”

The gentle swell of sand dunes and the minuscule patterns drawn and wiped out again by a hot breeze.

“Freedom. I had to set you free.”

Watching, each morning, over stagnant tides of sand and the wash of brilliance that swept up white and scalding into the sky. No living presence for miles of shimmering desolation.

“I set up a routine for myself, and followed it every minute of the day... I trained hard. The better I got with the Force, the less of me intruded. Sometimes I thought that’s how Yoda would’ve wanted me to approach the training in the first place, except―” He breathed in, “―Yoda couldn’t want me like this, could he?”

Failure. Cripple. Incomplete to the bone.

“It’s easy to get lost in the desert. I could tell why Ben went to live there. Why they couldn’t find him. After a while, you cease to exist.”

Release, finally, from everything but the close circles of day and night. Time measured by the angle of his own shadow across the dazzling sand.

“What about... those dreams?”

A shiver touched the back of his neck. Han’s voice, the voice that belonged to memory, unsettling him with a promise that would vanish if he turned around.

“I don’t know if they were dreams at all.”

Caught in the chills of waking, a struggle out of numb terror. The first breath like the cracking of a frozen shell.

_breathe breathe breathe_

“I think I was with you. I didn’t understand until―”

 _Until Leia claimed the one thing I wanted_.

He looked ahead, focused away from that clutch in his chest. Between the cliffs glistened a narrow wedge of the ocean, bright as grief.

“I’d realized before that there wasn’t any place for me. You wanted Leia, and in a way that made it easier to leave everything behind, but―”

“But what?”

In the minor shift of air currents, he felt Han’s movement and took himself out of reach. “Don’t touch me.”

“It was a matter of time,” Han started, on shaky ground now, his tone betrayed that much. “Time to get back on my feet and make sense of it all.”

“You had Leia, and you dropped her.” Scathing and abrupt, words that made him a stranger to himself. And caged inside his chest, a conviction hammered out in hard staccato. “Now _I’m_ the bigger challenge,” he snapped, “isn’t that how it is? I never tried to resist before.”

“You know that’s not―”

“That’s what you’re trying to prove here.” He spun to face Han, “And once you’ve got what you want―”

“Luke, stop it!”

No anger, just that unguarded look from a man who’d give no quarter. A disparaged emotion etching the lines around his mouth.

And through the silence, it stretched out and folded around him, the force of feeling that didn’t belong to him, clear as the surging of a tide. It roused a trembling start through the middle of his chest that wasn’t resistance anymore. Scrabbling and fluttering like a trapped creature.

 

All at sea, Han watched across a distance of shadowed inches. Resuming stillness turned Luke’s face into a mask. Were they getting anywhere at all? Sifting through memories to help Luke reconnect had seemed like a reasonable plan, but when those memories dragged up nothing but loss and disappointment — bound to get worse, too — the whole idea blew apart like a miserable house of cards.

Han pushed both hands through his hair. _And I’m the last person that oughta be meddling with this type of thing_. He’d sure as hell lost touch with his own feelings more often than he cared to recall.

“On the other side of the shield...” Luke said suddenly. “It’s just... me. The part of me that I buried.” Something in his tone had changed, and Han caught the shifting traces of it in his face, too. Greater clarity, maybe expectation, when Luke added, “Help me reach—”

“How?” Han cut in too fast.

“On Coruscant, when you were injured and we...” Luke gestured uncertainly.

 _Made love_ didn’t really match the experience, from the sound of that. Physical responses triggered in the aftermath of battle alarm, shock and confusion, following dependable dynamics. Perhaps that was all it’d meant to him.

“When you touched me,” Luke went on, pausing over something that began to edge through his composure, “I could feel what you felt, and that in turn...”

“Wait a second.” Maybe he’d witnessed too much of all that Force stuff, but Han could guess where this was heading, and he needed to hear it in plain speech. “You want to — you think what _I’m_ feelin’s gonna give you some sort of lead?”

“Yes.” Luke held his eyes with close conviction. “Like I told you, I never pried, and I wouldn’t. But now, if I open myself to the things _you_ feel, I could draw on them to... to break through.”

Han curbed the stupid impulse to cross his arms and turn himself into a living image of denial. No help for it, every sensible instinct recoiled. His whole life’d been patched together round his need for freedom, for independence — secure inside his own head, if nowhere else. The notion of being... invaded, so that Luke could feed off his sentiments very nearly turned his stomach.

“Not sure I can do that.”

If Luke was taken aback, it didn’t show. “It’s not so different from touching,” he said quietly. “It made me remember, made me want...” No trick of the light, that sudden flash in his eyes. “Made me want to be closer to you than I could be.”

His voice had softened too, gone shaky as a wish.

“Guess I see what you mean,” Han muttered.

A feedback loop, he explained it to himself, acting as a booster for Luke’s efforts. Simplified concept maybe, but it restored a sense of grounding that he badly needed. With a slow nod, he forced apprehension aside. “How?” he asked again. “Where do we start?”

“You know,” Luke said haltingly, and a small apologetic gesture went with it.

Matter of fact, he did. Impatience at his own cluelessness curled Han’s mouth. Up ‘til now, he’d somehow tricked himself into overlooking the obvious. They were digging through that blasted shield to get at the worst, the reason Luke had flung it up in the first place. And now Luke was asking for his own private stock of the worst, no less. His mind nailed the coordinates before Luke named them. 

“There was... another beginning. Cloud City.”

A point of connection, because Luke had somehow picked up the backwash halfway across the galaxy. Han swallowed. In all the months since escaping Jabba’s clutches, he’d refused to revisit that scene. Those final hours before the carbon freeze, the sharp reversals and revelations that traced a crack through the universe as he’d known it.

He turned sideways to fix a hard glance on the cliff face, like he could stare it down. Meet your own limits. Exactly at a point in time when failure was not an option. Still, he couldn’t take a headlong dive into that one, he’d only end up bracing against the fallout by force of habit.

“They had the whole equipment rigged just to torture people,” he started. “No other purpose to it. Top-notch engineering though, calibrated to hit specific areas of the brain.” And it was right before his inner sight, the targeting nozzles spitting vicious energy. A step to the side, he felt more than saw Luke’s posture tighten up. Couldn’t look at him though, not for anything.

“Well, you know what torture’s all about,” Han went on, clinging to the rationality of fact. “Reduce someone to screaming animal instincts ‘til they give you what they want. In the breaks between my own screaming, I could hear Vader breathe. Not excited by the whole procedure or anything, just — standing by.”

The sound of those slow, mechanical breaths closed around him again and trapped him in the shreds of his own mind. An intimate, impersonal attention bent on his agony, on every visceral response he couldn’t contain. Perhaps some evidence of sadistic pleasure would’ve been reassuring by comparison.

“Each time I got a break to put half a thought together, I wondered what he was lookin’ for. And if I’d let him have it in the end.” Thick and hot as sealant, resentment at his own weakness clogged Han’s throat. “But they never asked me any questions. It made no sense, and that made it... worse, I guess. Just pointless rip-‘em-to-pieces stuff.”

He had to pause there, and the notion that Luke might feel it with him — that same icy clutch of primal fears — sure didn’t make things any easier.

“’Til I found out it was all about you,” Han pushed himself towards the dark heart of the memory. “ _Good thing Luke’s someplace safe ‘n far-off_ , I kept thinking. I’d already figured I’d never see you again, I was dead meat still walking, more or less. But once I heard what the whole point of it was—”

Fury had driven him back to his feet — to punch Lando’s lights out, if he could manage — and it coasted through him now, hot enough to light a sizzling fire in his gut. For about five seconds. Took no longer, back on Bespin, for the corollary to sink in, and another kind of deep freeze started up, like a wash from within.

Han straightened his back, fingers hooked through his gunbelt for want of a solid hold. The things that’d chased through his head, once Lando had dropped his little shock grenade, hadn’t amounted to linear thinking. And they hardly did in retrospect.

“Vader going after you like that... he was up to something worse than simple execution, I could tell. Man had a black gulf inside him as wide as the Mid-Rim Fault. Once he got hold of you, with that kinda need to destroy—” His voice caught on a biting edge, but his second effort turned out no better. “Even if he let you live, you’d be—”

Han broke off, swamped by older fears that sluiced past every resistance and wrenched at his stomach. _Once Vader’s finished with Luke_ , he’d thought, _there’ll be nothing left_. And he’d tried to lock down all the memories, but they’d swamped him anyway. Luke’s crazy brand of courage, his resilience and quick humor, the way he could get all excited over little things. Always open to the promise of something good and hopeful, no matter how hard reality tried to slap him down. And Vader was out to grind all that to dust.

 _And damn near scored, too_. Han’s jaw clenched. A black pit fell open inside him, just like it had all those months ago. And he was shaking, goddamnit.

Out of the dark he’d conjured came an unexpected touch. Luke’s hand covered his own, unlocked his sweat-damp fingers from the belt. “How I wish I could’ve spared you that.”

Han gripped back without a thought, catching at a thread of warmth that segued into differrent notions. “I kept telling myself, _they’re wrong, how would Luke even know where we are?_ ”

More than recalled fear thickened his voice now, it was grief, the hopeless, desperate kind he’d never wanted to face at close quarters. Han shook his head. No point mourning imagined losses, so long after the fact. He seized on a troubling question to break clear. “Why’d he pick me, not Leia? To draw you out.”

But everything he’d just disclosed pretty much solved that old riddle, didn’t it? Luke’s fingers twined through his own, finally drawing Han’s eyes back to him, and despite the close contact, he was startled to find Luke so near.

 _Because you love me_. He could read as much in Luke’s unfaltering gaze, but was that plain rational insight or had it come to mean something more?

Between one breath and the next, a thready warmth curled into Han’s mind and brushed his senses, less than thought and more intimate than touch. Gone again, a phantom shiver.

He pulled himself together with an effort. All hells, he’d half forgotten what the purpose of this whole exercise was. Trauma compacted into impregnable black matter. Luke’s need for some kind of reinforcement to burst past that crushing barrier. 

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do,” Luke started, but a catch in his voice interfered.

 _To turn back time_ , Han guessed at the missing rest. And wasn’t that exactly what they’d set out to accomplish right here? When Luke tipped his chin up, a telltale shimmer showed in his eyes. So maybe the feedback loop was working after all.

 _On with it_ , Han nudged himself back on track. There was little enough left to tell, to wrap up the memory and seal it off again.

“When they took me down to the carbon freeze,” he picked his way towards it, “Troopers brought Chewie ‘n Leia right along, even Threepio. But even if they’d brought friggin’ everybody I’d ever met, wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

A small flinch betrayed Luke’s reaction, a buried nerve flashing with instinctive recognition.

“I was out of it, all by myself,” Han finished. “Like part of me’d split off, and I didn’t belong to real life anymore. Like it was over already.” And now he guessed that Luke must’ve been locked into the same isolation when he’d slipped out into Endor’s night to surrender himself to Vader.

Looked like they’d circled back around to the point that was hardest to reach. Han thought he could see it reflected in Luke’s eyes, a rapid darkening that signaled the approach of a storm. No need to repeat a question he’d already asked. _When Vader took you to the Emperor_ ―

One moment, Luke stared at him, and the next he swung towards the cliff that blocked out the sky and the water, scrambling up the weathered rock like every nightmare had resurrected to bring him down. An old ache clamped tight around Han’s ribs as he watched after him.

 

 _Alone_. 

And this loneliness had a taste and a substance, because it was boundless and final.

Breaths hard and fast, Luke stopped on a jut of volcanic rock. Wind battered at him with the restless noise of the sea, white spray exploded and fell apart like a parody of light. Empty before him, miles of black water confirmed the safety of limits. And behind him, dependable footsteps measured the ledge.

“Don’t push me.” But his voice faltered and sapped the warning.

“You can do it.” Han’s body warmth like a solid shield against his back, blocking the night air. “You’ve come through all that, and you’re strong enough to live with it.”

Vertigo spun from the snarls he’d wrenched open. “What do you know?”

He stretched into the night, into the crackle of power that surrounded him, potent enough to draw lightning down on the trees and summon the wind into a dark gale. Erratic breaths driven back into his lungs.

“I didn’t... I didn’t know anything, before―” Barely audible in the blasts that lashed at his face, “that I was right about my father doesn’t change ― doesn’t mean I knew...”

The Dark Side. Enough power to raise a storm from that untouchable horizon, but not enough to cleave the ring of loneliness that stretched in every direction and locked tight in his head, his chest.

“So tell me... just one thing.” The wind brought Han’s voice closer than it should be.

“Just one?”

“You said you turned...”

A cold funnel, the wind twisted itself tighter around him, turned him invisible in the vast, layered dark.

“I tried to hide from them.” He drew a sharp breath, fighting with each breath the silence jammed behind his teeth. “I’ll never know was it Palpatine pushing these thoughts at me, or just that I gave in to my own fears, because I knew―” barely above a whisper now, “―I knew they could break me, I knew it. I could see it happen... the worst.”

 _Gods, no, I don’t want to look_.

“What, Luke?” Denied pressure in the flat tone, and he sensed the waiting that caged Han, held him to this brink like a promise made to himself.

Below, furious waves pounded the cliffs, and the noise climbed up inside him, one violent drumroll after the next.

“Palpatine told me he’d set a trap for you on Endor. You ― Leia ― Chewie... you’d all be captured―” A scream, buried in his throat, “—and all he had to do was make me watch. Each of you, tortured, killed. Right there before me... until I’d do anything to make it stop, _anything_.” Deafening now, a wild throb in his temples, and he squeezed his eyes shut until sparks danced behind his lids. “But then, it would’ve been too late for all of us.”

Words liberated into silence that rang with a stifled shout, his chest heaving around it.

“Luke, I know...”

 _No you don’t you can’t_ ―

“No!” he shouted it now, so much pressure in the sound that it lifted him up, denial spinning giddy on its axis, from assertion to deliverance.

 _No_. The same cry that he’d given in Palpatine’s throne room, when a final barrier broke. It splintered inside him, fear and resistance, forced out of his chest like rage. Bursting up with unbearable brilliance.

He opened his eyes, uncovered, hammered open into light, every muscle suddenly aching and every nerve bared to the blinding live energy that sprawled vast and lenient around him. That offered no hold.

 _Stretch out with your feelings_.

“I’m here,” Han said.

A pivot that turned him away from the clear-cut horizon, fingers homing for a nearer target. Skating over cloth to hesitate on the edge of skin.

“Just... let me touch you. I need to―” Voice harsh with contradictions, release and alarm outrunning each other ― and he found himself in a tight circle, Han’s arms banded around him, hauling him up against a tremor that wasn’t his own.

“I know how that feels.” Han’s breath at his temple and the sandpaper scratch of stubble the only familiar landmarks. “Just had a taste of it today.”

“You love me that much?”

Easy to feel it now, like the heat seeping through Han’s shirt, and with it, too much of everything, a bow wave that clashed into him ― until he shattered against Han, into a million pieces he’d never put back together in a lifetime. _Just breathe_...

Each breath racked his chest and shook him, the sear in his eyes getting worse by the moment.

“I know what it’s like,” Han murmured, straining for a comfort that could shelter them both, “when everything hurts. Every sound, every movement, every goddamn breath ― and there’s so much to lose, more’n you ever knew.”

But the talking steadied him, brought the kind of focus Luke still missed.

“You’re better at this than I am,” he managed.

“Yeah, like hell.” The rough hint of a chuckle caught in Han’s voice, so much relief and not enough air out here, where the wind still snatched at them.

Luke pulled himself upright, struggling for balance, and Han took his cue from that, like he had throughout the past weeks. Straightening too, he let his hands slide down Luke’s arms to complete the motion in thin air. Released him.

“Whenever you’re ready.” And without doubt, Han’s eyes told him that this was the hardest part, the fight in him tightening every move as he stepped back, turned and climbed down the cliff.

Luke stared down at the water, at silvered reflections lifting, sinking with the waves. Jumbled pieces without purpose that merged and fell apart in constant motion, too much to take in or recognize a pattern. His memories had surged like that, until they became more than memory, and spent fury released all the flotsam he’d refused to face —

_angerhategriefgodstoomuchlove_

— still coming at him, relentless, twisting and lashing out. Burning in his chest, his throat. But through it he could sense a slow, deep current, and it washed up a different truth. Since he’d walked away from the Emperor’s throne room, love had meant nothing but desperation.

The traces of resistance still lodged in every muscle and gripped him in a cold tremor. Fine spray whipped up against his face, and the water below reflected all the fractures within himself. Glaring bright shards that pitched into grief, into hope, longing and regret. But each belonged wholly to the light.

 

Han stopped in the hollow quiet surrounding the house, strange after the sea’s thunder and the jackhammer beat of his own heart. Like he’d been worlds away, and this unfamiliar landscape took its own time to come real.

Time had slowed down or sped up, he couldn’t tell, but a soft crunch of footfalls from behind finally made him swing about. And Luke was already there, driven back from the sea, his color high from the wind chill. When he gripped Han’s shoulders, nothing could seem to break his momentum, and the past weeks collapsed in the giddy joy of one moment. This was how it should’ve been on Endor, just like this, Han thought as he pulled him close. 

“Sorry?” he echoed a word crushed haphazardly against his shoulder.

“I was in love with you and never even remembered how―”

“Luke, you don’t know...” He snatched a fast breath.

“Still am.” Luke’s arms pulled tight around his neck.

And maybe it had to feel that way, a jarring knowledge that lanced down to the quick and left him defenseless. “Me too.”

“Since when―?”

“Always.” Han grinned shakily. “Before Hoth.”

“I never―” A hitch in his breath, then Luke’s head lifted.

“Better believe it.” His heartbeat revved up again and slammed into higher gear.

“I do. Now I do.” And that answer turned into sensation when Luke’s mouth brushed his own and lingered on the verge between breath and contact, a kiss like a wish that burned him for being so cautious.

A soft sound broke low in Luke’s throat, warning him that to go further could trip instant overload. He ran his hands down Luke’s back, a slow glide to ease the passage.

“We got all the time we want now.”

“Yeah, I ― I guess I’ll need―”

Face buried at his shoulder again, Luke weathered another storm front, one they could finally ride out together. Grief crowded in like an afterthought and spilled through Han’s chest, a blunt ache matched to the shudders that heaved Luke’s ribcage against him.

“’S okay...” And he was coaxing himself along just as much, through minutes that left no room for anything except the tight grip they kept on each other.

“Han...” Released on a breath that curled into the hollow of his throat, rich with promise.

He raised a hand to Luke’s face, followed a damp trail down his cheek and found the edges of a smile.

“Look at me.” Han swallowed hard against the full force of impact. So far they’d unburied only grief and anger. High time for the rest of it, for something that’d qualify as a real breakthrough.

“I _will_ need time,” Luke said, steadier now, “to put all the pieces back together. To confront the things I shut out.”

In the compact light of stars, Han could see part of the change that he’d come to anticipate. Strained, weary, and energized at the same time, Luke held his eyes, not the same anymore, but the fire in that glance was something Han recognized.

“It won’t be easy.”

Han pulled up his shoulders. “If I’d wanted easy, I would’ve sailed off to some pirate’s retreat a long time ago.”

Out of nowhere, Luke’s smile flashed up and struck him speechless, likely the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, reeling him in. Han framed it in both hands and bent to take Luke’s mouth, soft and slow, to savor every moment of it.

All the waiting came unraveled when Luke opened to him, tasting him in turn. In next to no time, it had his heartbeat speeding, because Luke returned the kiss with full fervor, demanding deeper breaths that crushed their chests together. Han seized his shoulders to haul him closer, filling himself with the warmth of Luke’s mouth, the gentle thrusts of his tongue, and every bit of advance and retreat went right to his head and into his bloodstream. Like he might’ve predicted if he’d let himself think about it, he couldn’t keep it light, couldn’t let up either. Not when Luke kissed him with so much fierce passion — like Han was his lifeline, his private reason to breathe — and it rendered his body electric, inch by inch. His fingers delved into the cloth of Luke’s tunic, groping for a handle against that dizzy rush, seeking skin at the same time. And he could almost feel a flush rise up into his touch when he’d worked his way past the topmost fasteners. Luke’s heartbeat slammed against his ribs, no steadier than his own.

Their mouths parted over a shapeless sound that wound up from nowhere and met again, coming back for more in a closed, charged circuit. Seductive tingles slid deep into Han’s body like threads of remembered sunlight, liberating something that’d been too long in hiding. Luke’s fingers tangled in his hair, and he pressed back, overrun by a jumble of sentiments and sensations wanting to fly out in every direction. Took him a while ‘til he noticed the predictable want that curled tight in his groin, and when Luke shifted, one arm locked around Han’s waist, a hard throb stretched him against the confining cloth of his pants.

Something like a ragged laugh got stuck Han’s chest, at the automated impulse to retreat and stop crowding Luke. No need for that anymore, not when Luke molded against him with mute, fervent pressure, his erection outlined in a hard ridge against Han’s thigh. Fumbling towards the same mindless rhythm that pulled on him, inevitable like the midnight tide. Nothing now but to let it come and claim its homeland, the waiting terrain of skin and muscles trying to merge with each clumsy grapple and shift. Han sucked in a quick breath.

“Luke.” A rough sound taking shape against Luke’s mouth. His fingers had crept under the black tunic’s collar and tracked a shiver that left goosebumps in its wake. “Cold?”

Luke shook his head, and Han guessed he was wearing the same dazed look.

“No, I’m ― no.” A slicing wind whipped blond strands back from his eyes that fairly shone in the dark. “But my knees might give out soon.”

“Yeah?” A shaky grin took hold almost before Han knew. “Makes two of us.”

Another smile broke on Luke’s face with dazzling suddenness, trapped Han to it so completely that it took him by surprise when Luke dropped down on the shaggy moss and pulled him along, their fall a full-body tackle into breathless entanglement.

“Wait, let me...” Luke rolled them to the side, fingers already flying across the fasteners of Han’s shirt, diverting only to tug the vest off his shoulders and return to their target with greater efficiency. His hand slipped inside the shirt with the cool night air and came to rest over Han’s breastbone, reading the staccato that skidded out of cadence.

“You’re―” Amazement in his eyes, his tone. “How can you want me like that?”

A swift pang flashed in Han’s chest, forcing a pause ‘til he’d found his voice again. “Trust me, Luke, ‘s easy. Be much harder if you asked me to stop.”

“No.” Luke’s fingers tightened on the back of his neck. “I couldn’t, I ― gods, I want you so much―” urging him down until their lips almost met, “it’s not a memory now, it’s real, and I don’t know how to show you, but―”

His mouth closed over Han’s half-gathered answer, joined the rhythm of their breathing, and his fingers twisted themselves into Han’s hair. Held him to that outpour of need with unconscious force, until Han broke away long enough to mutter, “Don’t worry, it’s coming through loud ‘n clear.”

All his attention bent on tracking the truth of that feeling, touch it and taste it, he pried the tunic open and bared Luke’s chest in a hurried fumble. Under the curve of Luke’s ribcage fanned a rapid pulse, and Han followed with light fingers, his mouth aligned to the rise and fall of breath, scaling it, tracing salt and the shiver that crawled out from the center. An elusive taste budding on his tongue when he licked at a tight nipple and held it gently between his teeth.

Luke’s hands seized into fists on his shoulders. “Han, I can’t―”

A memory pulsed up sharply from the back of his mind — too many variants of the same denial — and scattered under the impact of blinding relief. So different now, nothing but a time limit, because neither of them was going to last very long. Not with all that urgency building and straining, escaping confinement at last.

“Doesn’t matter,” Han murmured, not about to slow down any, and pressed his hips up hard against Luke, a thick wave of pleasure pushing up from his groin.

But wherever he touched, Luke was already there, each response a flare-up from starved nerves, his hands restless in their chase through mirrored discovery ― until Han caught them between his own. “Wait, lemme just...”

Instead of finishing, he straddled Luke’s thighs and cupped a hand over his crotch, loving the clear, demanding shape of desire and the jolt that jutted Luke’s hips up. Something frantic kept in check by the taut muscles over his belly, twisting towards freedom ― but only his fast, shallow breaths confessed as much, no sound, not yet. Han leaned over, gripping Luke hard through his pants, and caught the next gasp with a flick of his tongue across the full lower lip.

“More?”

“Han―” Between one flutter of his lashes and the next showed a wild spark. “Yes.”

When Luke arched up to meet him in another kiss, Han let his tongue probe deep, suggesting a rhythm that stirred a moan low in Luke’s throat. And he wanted to hear more of it, see more come unbound and revealed to the light.

Easing himself to the side, Han pulled down the zippers and pushed cloth out of the way, down over Luke’s hips, his fingers already closing on him. An easy fit just waiting to happen, and Luke’s breaths labored to catch up with the pleasure that thrummed and stretched blindly into each touch. Han tightened his grip to savor the silky glide over solid heat, and followed quick throbs to the crown. He circled his thumb across it, and it drove Luke’s hips off the ground again. Shortened breaths hissed through his teeth, revealing tension and effort. A covert struggle, because here they were facing another line to be crossed, that could only be crossed in a blind leap.

“C’mon, kid, let go...” His lips sketched a heated trail along Luke’s throat and jaw, “’m still here to catch you.”

“No,” Luke gasped, “wait, please—” His fingers dug into Han’s shoulder, almost painfully hard, until he raised his head.

Too much maybe, too soon after that abrupt burst back into life. Propped on one elbow, Han leaned over him and studied the tense face. With a strident kind of clarity, he recalled just how raw he’d felt for days after coming out of hibernation. Unsettled among spikes of memory, excess sensations, and sentiments torn from their usual moorings.

Luke reached a hand up to his face. “I don’t want you to do this just for me, I want to share it.” Resolve had returned to his voice, but unconditional warmth showed through, showed in his eyes and shaded them a near-midnight blue. “This time, Han. I need to feel you.”

He had to clear his throat first. “Hell, but I’ve missed you.”

Still felt like an irresistible dream, this sudden turnabout into freedom. He took in the thin lines around Luke’s eyes and mouth, tracking recent change, a new kind of intensity still coupled with restraint, and the wild radiance that came with his smile. A blatant, beautiful contradiction that knocked his heartbeat off-kilter again.

“Can I?” Luke pressed a kiss to his mouth, but his hand was quicker than that, lifting the catch of Han’s belt to snap it loose.

“Help yourself,” he murmured, out of breath again when Luke unfastened his pants, and his fingers dived inside, liberating him to the taunt of cool air, to a gliding touch that lasted only for a moment and still sent a sweet, hot jab through his belly. Their hands collided as he reached down to help pushing fabric out of the way, fumbling with absurd haste.

“C’mere,” Luke breathed, catching hold of his shoulders, “closer, just—”

“Just a second.” Took an effort to hang on to practical purpose in the middle of all this, but Han finally managed to yank Luke’s pants down his thighs. He’d only pulled them as far down as his knees when Luke reached for him again, but it’d have to do for now. Taking directions from the tight clasp of Luke’s hands on his hip and shoulder, Han settled over him, and the first sliding friction of his cock against Luke’s tore up a groan from deep within his chest. Luke opened his legs as much as he could in this hopeless tangle of half-discarded clothing, and they found a fit that matched them in artless, fevered pressure.

Between racing breaths, Han braced himself on his elbows, his fingers laced through the blond hair that shimmered with starlight, sliding some sweat-dampened strands back from Luke’s forehead. “Like this?”

“Yes,” Luke gasped, such a glow in his face that Han’s pulse stumbled with incredulous joy. “So close, Han, I need—”

A gasp tore the words apart, and Han kissed it off his lips, welcomed the flicker of Luke’s tongue that met him in another hot-wired surge. _More_. That was all, for the time being, just the blazing need to get as close as possible, and it tightened Luke’s hands on his hips, until every sensation centered in his groin, irrevocably, lashing him to the flare and fall of a more predictable hunger.

Perhaps Luke was still fighting for control, his quick, sharp gasps out of sync with the writhe of his hips under Han’s weight, but all that tantalizing friction was bound to defeat him soon. Han groaned into his mouth and thrust back against him. Tension gripped every part of him, crackling with loose energy, and forced an urgent rhythm. Been too long that he hadn’t felt at home inside his own body anymore ― now layers of unease were melting off at life’s breakneck speed ― and with each driving motion, a ferocious heartbeat tried harder to press out of his skin. No way to pace himself now, pace this, and Luke didn’t give him any chance for it between one burst of sensation and the next. No taking it slow, no gentle slideover into a changed reality. Everything that burned up savage inside him simply defied the notion.

Luke’s fingers slid up his spine and closed around his neck, trembling slightly. Han released his mouth only to catch that look of raw desire on his face, without breaking the rhythm that welded them together in a joint struggle for deliverance. Closer, with every push and shove, timed only to a wild drumbeat that caught between their chests.

“Luke,” he groaned, “c’mon—” because he really couldn’t hold on much longer — when a taut tremor told him that Luke had just reached his own limit.

Fingers digging into Han’s backside, his face buried at the curve of Han’s neck, Luke bucked in the grip of abrupt release, a hot, liquid pulse between their bellies. And with every shudder, jagged moans tore free, the sound muffled but scouring like ricochets in the hollow of Han’s chest.

Long shivers still coursed through Luke’s frame when he reached down between them and his fingers closed tight around Han’s cock. Ignition, stark and perfect. Flintsparks shot up through his middle as he thrust into Luke’s fist— once, twice — and his own climax overtook him like lightning out of clear skies, heat and pressure racing up his thighs and down his back, wrenching a shout from his throat. And he let himself go with that powerful upsurge, spilling over Luke’s fingers against slickened skin.

Han slumped, but his uneven breaths still carried rough sounds of release. Worn out into boneless languor, he pressed his lips against the fingers that caressed his face. A buzzing twilight enfolded him, alive with the residue of jangling energies, and he needed another moment to take stock. Between rumpled clothing and overheated skin, sweaty and sticky all over, they were pretty much glued together, but when he tried to move and take his weight off Luke, a strong arm wound around his waist and held him there.

“No, stay,” Luke murmured, “stay here, just let me hold you.”

His voice shook a little, and when Han summoned enough coordination to lift his head, there were tears on his face. _Deliverance_ , he thought incongruously, and leaned in to drop kisses everywhere, from the corners of Luke’s eyes down to his jaw and back up to his lips. 

“Sure,” he rasped, “long as you want me.”

“I do,” Luke answered, and something else was laced through his tone, something Han couldn’t begin to decode in his thoroughly dazed state.

The night-wind brushed a fine chill down his back, but Luke’s hands moved in the opposite direction, underneath his shirt, ‘til they came to rest over Han’s shoulder blades. Another tight breath heaved his chest. Han pushed up on his elbows.

“I’m crushing you,” he mouthed beside Luke’s ear, and rolled them to the side, into a comfortable hold — discounting for the moment all the rumpled clothing and the scruffy moss scratching in tender places. Couldn’t make himself detach and suggest something reasonable, like heading over to the residence to take advantage of the bed, not yet.

Han stretched his back and looked up at the tightly packed stars, like a distant reflection of the pleasant prickles still coasting along his nerves, his fingers adrift in Luke’s hair. Until a different sensation crept up.

“Talk to me, Luke.” The slight twitch of his right hand, tightening above Han’s stomach, confirmed a suspicion of trouble. “What’s on your mind?”

Luke raised his head at that, not quite pushing away, but balanced on the edge of some restless impulse.

“Love,” he said, but the taut, dry sound of his voice reached Han first, and made short work of any hopeful notions.

“What about it?”

Luke’s glance slid aside in a way he recognized now, all the way back from that blasted sandstorm on Tatooine. Following an instinct to protect the most scathing truths, to cover up his losses. Before Han could frame another question, Luke sat up, his shoulders squaring.

“My father,” he started — and paused to meet Han’s eyes again. “I wanted my father to be someone I could love. I wanted proof that he loved me, in spite of everything he did to me.” The words came faster now, carved and chiseled like they’d been running through his head a long time, set down in solitude, in unyielding stone. “And it killed him. I buried love with him.”

And that summed it all up, a hellishly closed circle. Han’s gut tightened with fresh anger and something a lot less clear.

For long moments, Luke was silent. “A treacherous thing, love.”

Han’s mind went through an abrupt backflip, targeting the worst of his own flaws. _You had Leia, and you dropped her_. Too right. A game of attraction and resistance spinning out of control, gratitude tangled up with bewildered affection, and both too closely tied to regret. His own failure stood out sharp and noxious.

“Depends,” he muttered.

“On what?” Luke’s eyes searched his face and probably picked up more than he’d wanted to reveal.

“Being honest with yourself, for one thing.” Han raised one hand for a vague, uncomfortable gesture. “Taking risks, for another.

“But, Luke—” He broke off again because he sure as hell couldn’t discuss Vader and whatever might’ve gone down under that unholy black armor. “If you — if your feelings got twisted into something less’n bright and generous, that’s ‘cause they were caught up in _his_ choices, the things he’d done. He—” Han swallowed hard and forced the words out regardless. “He told you the truth ‘n crippled you ‘cause you wouldn’t dance to his tune, right? And if he finally discovered some fading human spark in himself, that’s because you loved him anyway.”

“I couldn’t live with it.” Luke pressed his lips together and inhaled sharply through his nose. “I wanted him to... give me back what he’d taken, myself.”

“Yeah, so you wanted something for yourself,” Han said heatedly. “And how’s that wrong?”

Luke’s eyes widened with disbelief, as if the answer ought to be obvious as blazing daybreak. “But love should be—”

“No,” Han cut in, sensing the proximity of familiar grounds. “Look, it ain’t self-denial or hope-springs-eternal, or any of those things. It’s not some kinda magic glow letting you exist on nothing but hot air and maybes.” He only had to remember the way Luke had let him go on Hoth, with that braced kind of acceptance, to know that this whole misconception ran back a long way. About time to root it out for good. “It gets impatient and hurtful and rough, makes you want too hard and struggle as all get-out, ‘cause it’s got the power to change you.”

Luke’s glance softened, and Han realized too late that he’d been talking about himself more than anything.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, “how’s that for a lecture? And how would I know anyway.”

“From your own experience,” Luke said dryly, with a mercurial spark of humor. “I’m glad.”

Baffled, Han shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“If you could see yourself, you would.” Luke reached for his hand — balled up tight atop his stomach, though Han hadn’t noticed before — and wrapped his fingers around it. “I guess it’s been too long,” he went on slowly. “I spent too much time locked into the same reasoning, the same fight. I pictured myself as... my father’s savior. And nothing else.”

“’Til there was nothing left.” Han uncurled his fingers and linked them with Luke’s, one brand of tension set awkwardly against the other. “But he saved your life so you could live it. And — all hells, I’m grateful that he did!”

“I know.” A smile slipped out, just a tug on the corners of Luke’s mouth, but it rose to his eyes in the aftermath. “I—” He cut himself off with a quick shake of the head. “No, enough of that.” And before Han could protest, he added, “For now.”

No need to try and deal with it all right away. Han could see the good sense in that.

Luke released his hand only to ease back down by his side and leaned over, cradling Han’s jaw with a light touch. “On Endor, I didn’t even realize that I...” His voice lowered, gained a husky edge, “that I had the power to hurt you.”

“Never thought you were doin’ it on purpose.” Han shrugged uneasily.

“But now.” Something washed across Luke’s face, bright as amazement. “I could feel it all. What you showed me, let me see. Here. Without you, I never would’ve—”

“That’s what we came here for,” Han reminded him. And he could see it now, all that Luke had unburied, coming alive in his face.

“It’s about time I gave something back,” Luke insisted. “What about you, Han, what do you need?”

And he made it sound like it was all just a matter of wishing, a thousand possibilities unlocking at a snap of the fingers. Han caught hold of his wrist, and the swift ripple of pulse under his thumb felt like anchorage. There’d been too many ruptures in his own life to indulge needs beyond limited stretches of time, but now something sharper threatened to take wing, rising up through his middle with an unsteady breath.

“Got everything right here,” he said roughly, and blinked back an absurd sting in his eyes.

Mixed emotions flew across Luke’s face, too quick to catch or decipher. Didn’t matter anyway, all that free-wheeling intensity by itself was a goddamn miracle. Han trailed his fingertips up Luke’s forearm, and a small shiver fled ahead of his touch.

“Maybe we should go back inside.” Han tipped his head towards the residence. “Get ourselves cleaned up.”

“No.” The smile he’d missed so long traced itself against his lips when Luke bent closer. “All I want to see is you and open sky. I’ll get some blankets, okay?” Before Han could reach back and grab him into another kiss, he gained his feet in one fluid motion and tugged his pants up. “Won’t take long.”

Receding footsteps and the sea’s whispers kept Han company, and a swathe of stars overhead watched him where he sprawled among the moss banks, disheveled and disoriented. Part of him was still reeling from all those desperate flare-ups crammed into a single day. Another’d been left raw and watchful, like the next reversal couldn’t be too far off. Han aimed a weak grin at himself ― _well, get some leverage, and get it now_ ― while he flicked prickly green fragments off his thigh, thinking he should either rearrange his clothes or shed them entirely.

Before he’d made up his mind, Luke was back, dropped a bundle of blankets on the ground, and kicked his boots off. When he shrugged out of his tunic, twilight silvered his skin, accenting a ripple of muscles. The sight of him, like this, trapped Han somewhere between memory and a thickened heartbeat.

“Temporary clean-up, if you want it.” Luke crouched beside him, the twitch of a smile on his mouth, and held out a wash-cloth.

“Sure, yeah.” Han spread his hands and lay back. If anything could, something so mundane ought to help him level out, restore a sense of reality. The damp, warmed cloth landed squarely on his belly, and Luke went about it with thorough attention. A fine prickle swept over Han’s skin when fingertips outlined the dark curls threading down from his navel.

“Let me look at you.” Luke’s glance captured him with close intent, and all things ordinary fled back into a vague distance. “Let me...” His hands tugged the shirt off Han’s shoulders and cupped them, very warm now, thumbs running thoughtfully over the bone’s curve. Like he was asking permission ― and that notion jogged Han’s mind back onto clearer tracks.

“You c’n do whatever you―”

“—what _we_ want,” Luke mouthed against his throat, nipping at pulse, shivers threading where his hands skated across Han’s ribcage. “It’s both of us now, remember?”

The certainty in his tone tripped another jitter of disbelief, quick as a catch in Han’s breath. Much as he wanted to wrap himself up in the present, falling into step with the jolts of change took its own time. Far easier, for now, to give himself up to Luke’s touch, to a passionate search that found targets everywhere. Quick breaths skimmed Han’s chest, made his skin flush in anticipation when Luke’s fingers splayed out and toyed through sparse curls. A static kind of pleasure hummed in his body and released electric flares when Luke’s mouth fastened suddenly on a nipple, a swirl of his tongue snapping off sparks that darted all the way into Han’s gut.

He slung his arm around Luke’s shoulders to hold him there, but with a murmur that blew another shiver down the middle of his chest, Luke slid out of his grasp. Covered his torso with nips and damp kisses, teeth raking across the flat arc of a rib, a flicker of his tongue followed by a moment’s firm suction. Stalking pleasure with his mouth and hands until sensation unfolded into a rich blend, too varied and fleeting to catalog.

Adrift in that overflow, Han lost focus and purpose to a weightless, spellbound state. Pressed back into clumps of crushed, body-warmed moss, he let his hands roam across Luke’s neck and shoulders, sliding thoughtlessly with the night air over the welcome heat of Luke’s skin. The whole of his body outlined in gentle brushstrokes that charted new trajectories, cradled soft thrums where his muscles stretched out from his bones. Sometimes Luke paused to study him, as if gauging his reactions.

“Tell me if there’s anything...” His thumbs drew parallel lines down Han’s belly, “if there’s anything you don’t like.”

Han shook his head, the whole idea so absurd it bounced off his clouded mind. Turned on with every inch of skin, his nerve endings stretched hungrily to the surface and plunged rapid reports back into the depth of his body. _And that’s the easy part_ , the notion flitted through his head and took off, like he’d just glanced down the long, glistening stretch of a runway.

“I can―” he started to protest when Luke moved back and pulled off his boots ― gained him nothing but a curt shake of the head anyway ― and gathered enough presence of mind to lift his hips when Luke dragged his pants down and tugged them off over his feet. With an effort, Han quenched the impulse to grab him back close. Luke probably needed some measure of control right now, some leeway to reach past those shattered limits.

Scratchy tufts of moss prickled Han’s bare skin, then Luke’s hands slid up his ankles, his calves. “You’re so beautiful, Han.”

Some witless reply came out as a dismissive noise, not that it stopped Luke or the way his nerves fired under the quick repartee of Luke’s fingers, traveling the length of his thighs. Every sensation like something freshly discovered, all shiny edges and wanton speed. But perhaps Luke was tracking a fantasy here, something he could never live up to ― part of Han’s mind scoffed in sarcastic reflex at that, but what if it was true? Perhaps Luke was hanging on to someone he might’ve been in the past but wasn’t anymore. Too much was coming unstrung at the light, urgent scrutiny of Luke’s touch, reaching places that’d been shut down long enough to forget all about them. Laying him bare. And to be known, exposed like this still kicked up a troubled swirl in Han’s stomach.

Until strong hands framed his hipbones and held him captured to the soft, probing caress of Luke’s mouth that left no room for anything but instant, urgent pleasure. A shapeless sound caught between Han’s teeth. Closed lips skimmed his cock, warm breath teasing in the wake of that, and he had just enough time to gulp in some air before a slow, heated slide engulfed and enclosed him. A giddy pull opened in the pit of Han’s stomach, and took him to an edge of aching intensity inside the same breath.

Still tangled in the shirt sleeves, his range of movement amounted to bucking his hips, but he wrestled free to reach down fast, like his hands might close on thin air, grabbing hold of Luke’s shoulders. A groan riding up his throat and another, in the rhythm of Luke’s mouth and tongue, choked off when Luke took him in deep, every thought outrun by the heartbeat that crashed into his ribs.

“Luke ― stop―” A warning rasped out with a violent surge through his center, “I’m... too close.”

Luke’s head lifted, and Han could see it on his face now, a scalding kind of joy. Hard to bear, like anything undiluted. “I want to remember this when you’re inside me.”

Coupled with Luke’s breath against his rigid cock, each word made a direct impact in Han’s groin, and he must’ve stared at Luke like all his plugs’d been pulled, provoking the flash of a smile. “I had a lot of time to imagine all kinds of things, back when.”

Before he could reply, Luke moved up into his arms again, crushing them together, “but it was never―” His voice turned hoarse and unsteady, “I couldn’t have imagined anything like this.”

Han arched his back at the push of Luke’s erection against his belly, traced clearly through the restrictive pants. Time those came off, he should’ve taken care of that awhile ago. His hands scooted to Luke’s waistline, fumbling to undo those fasteners a second time, every bit as impatient as Luke who moved with him and against him. As soon as he’d kicked his legs free, he pressed down again, and mirrored heat pulsed through Han’s gut. Electrified pleasure raced up his spine, to collide with a notion that flitted out of nowhere. _You don’t owe me_. Mouth buried at the curve of Luke’s neck, between tangled strands that curled up damply, he locked both arms over the slender back.

He’d never really let himself imagine. Nothing remotely like this, anyway. And now Luke was pressed up tight against him, quick heartbeats and faster breaths matching his own. Another flight of sparks poured up through his middle and made it hard to breathe, hard to think.

“Han...” Soft lips sketched a trail down from his temple ‘til their eyes met. “What is it?”

Out of words, he shook his head and detached one hand to frame Luke’s jaw. All the weeks since Endor, he’d thrown every effort into undoing a wrong that held Luke caught to the past, and the notion of shattering that barrier had been every bit like plotting a blind jump to lightspeed.

“Is it,” Luke started, searching his face, “is this—”

“More’n I ever thought,” Han cut him off before that troubled start could raise doubts. “More like... a dream I never had.”

“It’s not, it’s real,” Luke whispered. A smile flickered from the shadows that fell over his face.

 _I just got too damn close to losing you_ , Han thought what he didn’t want to say right then. Still felt like a deep-seated frost, outlined against all that excess heat in his bloodstream. With a short, decisive move, he reversed their positions and lowered his head to seal Luke’s mouth with his own. Had to feel this reality and absorb it through his skin, then maybe he’d retrieve some sense of balance, too.

Luke reached back at once, arched up into a rhythm that was going to claim and drown them. Piercing flares raked down into Han’s groin as he pushed against him, raising the pressure that pulsed and circled and urged for release. Every lunge and surge skimmed a blazing borderline, Luke’s fingers tight on his hips, and Han braced instinctively against the building current. Too close to... everything. When he lifted his head, the flush in Luke’s cheeks and a bewildered brightness in his eyes brought back the kid he’d once been, ready to tumble into flight on a rush of heedless excitement.

“I meant what I said, you know. I want you—”

“Say that one more time,” Han stopped him, between ragged breaths, “and we won’t get round to it, ‘cause I’ll lose it right here.”

With a soft, winded laugh, Luke stilled under him. “But you—?”

“And don’t ask me if I want it either.” Han dropped a gentler kiss against his mouth and planted his elbows on either side of Luke’s head to steady himself. “Don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything half as bad.”

But that was just it, a mindless intensity about to burst to the surface. _What do you need?_ Luke’s question brushed through his mind again, circling a guarded spot. _You. I need you_ ― and Han remembered exactly why it wasn’t safe, on a thud of heartbeat high up in his chest ― hell, everything just leaped off the scales right now, but there was no way he knew to stop it.

“Just one thing, Luke,” he said huskily. “You don’t need to prove anything to me, and no matter what we do—” Blast it all, but the hand he laid against Luke’s cheek was trembling a little. “Just you, here, that’s enough.”

Luke’s fingers carded through his hair, and a sharp reaction passed through his entire frame. “I love you.” Quiet and clear like his glance, suspended in the narrow space where their breaths mingled. “And I need to feel you, as close as I can.”

“Luke...” A small detonator charge went off in Han’s chest, outblazing the hot pull in his groin.

Before he could say more, Luke snatched a shaky breath and started to disentangle. “Here... I brought something back from the house.”

He shook out a blanket, spreading it over the moss right next to them, and something palm-sized rolled from it. Han couldn’t take the time for a closer look though, not when stray starlight threaded across the muscles in Luke’s back and shoulders, outlined them in a sheen of sweat. Caught to the sight, Han moved only when Luke turned to hand him a vial. One of the Worren’s skin-oils that gave off a spicy scent when he unstoppered it. He looked up at Luke, pausing, as if the quiet of this moment might burn out too fast.

 _I’m not fragile_ , he remembered. Denial, safeguard, and desperate pride.

Open to life, Luke was vulnerable again and newly defenseless to memories shredding at everything he was. Han raised a hand to outline the gentle curve of Luke’s mouth with his thumb. Even though there’d been no real choice, he’d helped dismantling every protection, blasting it all to pieces, and got caught in the backdraft. Feelings breaking open like scars. He bowed his head against Luke’s shoulder, brushing a kiss to the clear jut of bone.

“Hell, I hope I can do this right.” His hands far from steady, damnit, and it had been one hell of a long time anyway, the memories blanched and dim with distance. “Been a while.”

Sudden interest sparked in Luke’s glance. “How long?”

He’d never paused to consider the coincidence before, but now that he did, Han felt caught out and foolish for it. “Now that you’re askin’...” He shrugged. “Not since we met.”

Busy as the Rebel Alliance’d kept him, his courier jobs had still left enough room for quick side trips and stopovers. Where he’d always wound up in female company. Coincidence, right. Luke’s fingers trailed into his hair again and tugged his head up. Facing him with the brightest glance in the whole damn galaxy.

“Ain’t no one compares to you,” Han said thickly, “simple as that. Just couldn’t admit it at the time.”

“It’s not important anymore.”

One look into his eyes confirmed the truth of that. Luke held nothing back, and it struck Han again, like a light-burst under his breastbone. A commitment hovering between them, that he’d already made over slow, rebellious stages. This was merely the moment when Luke took him up on it. And he needed proof that this was real, a change carved to the quick, racing with his blood. Han pressed a kiss to his mouth, flustered in spite of himself, and let some oil dribble out over his fingers.

“Lay back.” His lips traced the curve of Luke’s ear, settled briefly on the tender spot below.

Without breaking skin contact, Han stretched out beside him and ran his fingers up the inside of Luke’s thigh. Riding over smooth skin towards velvet heat and a taut twitch of resistance. He probed gently, circling and teasing, and the muscles over his own belly tightened absurdly when he found entry. Luke pushed his hips into each slow, searching thrust, seeking the pleasure of it, a deeper contact.

“Han, you...” Luke turned his face to mouth the words against the hollow of his throat, “you don’t have to be careful with me anymore.”

He tried for a gruff tone. “Sure I do.”

“No.” The start of a smile twitched around roughened breaths, “what I mean is... don’t watch yourself. Remember what you told me, about not having to take what’s freely given?”

Free. Ready to make his own choices now, and Luke was just waiting for him to drop all safeguards in turn. Han sat back, poured some more oil into his palm to slicken himself, but his own touch felt remote, nothing like the passionate search that his skin recalled almost everywhere. As if Luke already owned more of him than he’d ever thought possible.

“I remember,” he murmured back with delay. “Still want this to be—”

“Yes.” Luke reached for him, impatient, breathing hard. “It will be.”

But when Han nudged his knees back and moved between them, balancing himself on one elbow, a steeled kind of readiness showed in Luke’s face, in the tight set of his mouth. One glance at that lock-down took the burning edge off Han’s arousal. He leaned over to cup Luke’s face, to loosen the clench in his jaw. “Stop hiding. You don’t have to do that anymore.”

 _I screamed_ , he recalled, a tight, unforgiving whisper, and wanted to hear Luke’s voice with sudden vehemence, shouting with pleasure so he’d recognize himself in a different element. Find out how much more he could be.

“I know.” Luke reached back and linked their fingers for a secure hold. “It’s just...”

 _Easier said than done_. Desire at odds with ingrained instinct, with draining memories. One way or another, some of this would hurt, just like the rest of it, the whole damn struggle that had left them too raw in too many places.

“It’s both of us now,” Han echoed words that he’d needed to hear a short while ago, “together.”

One hand anchored on Luke’s hip, he breathed in and inched forward, all the stray energies channeled into a single motion ― salty air filling his lungs and held there, against the savage pull that shot through his blood ― all of it coming together in a burst of breath that carried Luke’s gasp, a short spasm of pain.

“I know,” Han rasped, freezing instantly. “Just let it, let me—”

A squeeze of Luke’s fingers stopped him, and when their eyes met again, he could feel the first starts of adjustment, a sense of accord settling slowly through every muscle. Loosening a dozen tight knots in his own stomach. He shifted to bend down and brush their mouths together. Breath more than touch, but it eased through the tension, the waiting... An answering ripple ran through Luke’s frame and sheathed him in tight pressure. A harsh sound struggled in Han’s throat as he pressed in deep.

Good. Stark and untamed, the hard friction rooted in its own purpose. And unsettling, striking a vein of truth that ignited in frantic heartbeats. Fear of falling, from a different height right into the sky, stripped bare and lost without a limit to this feeling. Han squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.

“’M ready now,” he repeated what he’d said on Endor, a crucial choice shaped against Luke’s mouth, meshed with breathless anticipation.

He pulled back and saw the answer pass over Luke’s face, the sheer brightness of him finally coming through. “Me too.”

A deep thrill rocked him forward again. Fastened together in a first joint motion, a fevered jolt tore his breath out in a deep groan, Luke’s hand knotting in his hair. A wordless demand that snapped every safety off.

It was rough and clumsy with urgency, and closer to the truth for it. Advancing through different states of surrender, until they’d found the right fit. Forging a rhythm that grew liquid with the fusion of pulse and breath and the need to move. Long, deliberate strokes taking it deeper, a mutual breach of limits once drawn up in self-defense.

Han leaned in close to taste skin wherever he could reach, his mouth scaling the pulse point at Luke’s temple while his own pulse throbbed against fingers that loosened their grip into tenderness. He couldn’t stop watching Luke, the glitter of sweat threading down the side of his neck, the toss of his head. At one with himself, with a raw passion Han wanted more than the next breath ― and the feeling that fired in his own chest kept fumbling for the right expression ― _love you_ ― “so much―” Words losing their shape in his mouth as he thrust hard and deep.

A broken sound wrenched out of Luke’s throat, and another. Both of them pushing hard to make it irrevocable, leave an imprint on each other’s skin. No reason to be careful anymore. Han ran his hand across the pull and strain in those corded muscles as Luke thrust up against him, filling himself. Reached for him to align their pace in all things, every part of his body striving to contain the charge that built in his blood. His hand slid up and down over Luke’s cock, captured the fleeting essence of desire in those jolts of pulse and heat while he held on desperately, fighting for control ― until the force of it finally liberated Luke’s voice and gripped him with the driving essence of freedom.

Sliding and rocking against him, Luke repeated his name like a spell, husky and jagged and mounting as need took him over, driven up to a scalding edge of intensity. Han traced the loosened curve of his mouth at his fingertips, each breath a hot burst, and each broken moan a promise. And here they were shaping the very start of something untried, unbounded.

 _Gods, yes — all of it — now_. His own voice thick and strange when he gave in to rampant need, worked his hips faster and coupled them in a wild rush of energy that stormed Luke first. Changed the timbre of his voice and burst into pleasure when fierce shudders ripped through him. As Luke writhed into his thrusts, urgent chills started up at the bottom of Han’s spine ― and he couldn’t take any more than this, muscles clenching in time with his heart, too tight to resist, and no reason to resist anymore. _Luke_ ―

On a breathless surge, Han followed, like he’d been following a long time, through fall and flight into a moment’s suspension that brushed him with live, incandescent power ― like a touch of Luke’s soul, glancing bright and weightless across his senses. Closer than his own voice, those ragged sounds of surrender. His arms buckled and his hips jerked as a rough tide took him, sluiced in wave after slaked wave, and left him breathless in Luke’s arms. Luke clung to him with clutching force, like the world had gone into a mad spin. The shakes of release and overriding thrills easing up over long minutes.

“Kid...” When he finally raised his head, starlight pooled on Luke’s features, but there was more, something half-expected and totally new, like some inner radiance was starting to filter through those clear outlines. It took Han’s breath away and tightened his chest all over again. But that feeling, at least, was familiar. A crazy kind of tenderness that’d ripped him away from himself, that he’d fought for the longest time. Wrapped round his heart, it felt like unfiltered sunlight, hot and powerful and piercing. Like a trace of Luke’s presence within himself.

“Yes.” A thoughtless smile formed on Luke’s mouth, aimed directly at him. “Yes, Han, yes...” The shaky note of amazement sent another jitter into Han’s pulse.

“That was...” He gave up with a one-shouldered shrug, needing to catch more of his breath to locate a single congruous thought. A crazy flutter in his chest that could burst into laughter or something else.

“I feel.” Luke paused, his hands sliding up Han’s arms to his shoulders as he fumbled for words. “Like everything’s new and... so much more than it used to be. So much.”

Han tightened his grip a moment and leaned their foreheads together. “Probably sounds crazy, but I know what you mean.”

His mind dived back towards nightfall, the difference between then and now brazen like a comet’s tail. And here they were, still hopelessly entangled, a tumble of limbs, sweat-sleeked skin, and winded exhilaration. Han levered aside and tugged up the blanket to cover them.

“An’ you’ll be surprised to hear this,” he muttered, trying to lighten the mood, “but I’ve never been happier to hear you shout at me.”

“I didn’t―” Luke launched into automatic protest.

“Yeah, you did, but like I said...” He grinned when dazzled understanding took hold in Luke’s eyes.

“You _are_ crazy.” Luke shook his head and laughed softly, a beautiful, carefree sound.

“Call me anything you like...” Han touched his face, the glow that still lingered under cooling skin, “so long as you look at me like that.”

His fingers curled around a kiss Luke pressed into his palm, placed there together with his answer. “I’ll be doing that a lot from now on.”

Fatigue washed in as they settled down together. With closed eyes, Han listened to the ocean, behind the cliffs’ broken wall. Sounds of his childhood, like something culled up from a dream and sharpened in years after. Blending with Luke’s breaths, folded in his arms, to weave a quiet spell. And from it, a silent music played itself through his head, a secret rhythm that’d caught them out of step and rushed them back together. A whole flight of hopes that he’d never let himself own was perched on that rhythm, just waiting to take off. A midnight tide, turning. With a long, deep breath, Han gave himself up to it.

* * *

Too much light to stay asleep. Between the cliffs, the sun had climbed almost a hand’s breadth over the horizon and blazed across the water. Dissolved that narrow wedge of the ocean into a brilliant sway while Luke watched. Between his shoulder blades, Han’s breaths went out steady and quiet, tingling his skin.

One or two hours before, when a first notion of daybreak blanched the sky, something had jarred him awake, too real for a nightmare and too vague for memory. Like a piece of blackness rising up out of his own soul, and he lay trapped under its weight, eyes fixed to a scattered handful of stars. Until he felt the slide of warm limbs against his own, the subtle change in Han’s breathing pattern. Not alone. When Han reached for him, the worst of it had already passed, nothing but a chill under his skin that dispersed at Han’s touch.

They’d made love again with the slow rise of daylight, a piercing, unstoppable flow that surged and ebbed with a power he still didn’t understand. But then, he didn’t have to. Enough to feel it, let it fill him out and rend him open, a constant process of becoming. And like the night before, he could discern Han’s presence with every nerve and beyond, a signature traced in light and energy, set off against a sea of vibrant Force. All of it flooding him until he grew restless, too energized to stay in the warm, damp hollow under the blanket.

He rose quietly, a smile leaping up at the soft snort of protest from Han who didn’t wake, merely tucked a corner of the blanket under his chin. Toes curled into humid moss, Luke paused another moment, just breathing. From every atom of air, soil, stone and water unlaced rich patterns of molded power ― too much to take in, but embracing him, generous and suffusing. A steady cadence in the background, the slow pull of tides.

When he reached farther out, different murmurs stirred, grating out of darkness, from the deep well of the past. He’d carry that with him wherever he went, more than memory, a change tied and laced through the fibers of his being. Scalding brilliance braided into utter blackness. Half-healed rifts and glaring gaps that he’d have to confront one by one. And there’d be other times when he would falter, when he’d fight himself again for a truth always too sharp for comfort.

Halfway up the cliff, Luke noticed he’d taken the same route as last night, drawn by the clash and boom of waves battering the rock. From the swerving tide rose a gauze of silvered spray, netting a fleeting chill across his legs. He licked salt off his lips, every sensation crisp and whole. Blindingly real.

Uprooted and electrified to the edges of his skin, he stopped on the ledge to let the wind blast him, squandered his body heat to the morning chill. Between cold gusts, fingers of sunlight slid across his body, blending through currents of Force that shifted in the same rhythm. Until one of those lucent threads pulled loose, wrapped itself around him with intimate warmth, a breath against the nape of his neck. Luke stilled completely to trace it back through the past night. Shared with him, from the memory of desperate anger, desperate grief, to the full force of passion that had brought him back to himself. A gift of life.

When he turned, Han was right behind him, still barefoot, though he’d been reasonable enough to pull his pants on.

“Bit too cold for a swim, if that’s what you’re thinkin’ about?” But underneath that easy tone hovered another question, a tacit concern.

Luke shook his head. “I can feel the Force again. Really _feel_ it.” And he barely recognized the breathless sound of his own voice. Whatever else he might yet have to face, he’d always remember — “It’s so... bright.”

“You are,” Han returned, his mouth tucked up in a small, defenseless grin.

“It’s just―” The glint of laughter in Han’s eyes splintered in his own chest, drove his breath out in a sudden rush. Arms wide, Luke threw his head back, and all that joy burst open into something nameless, released with a shout.

“I’m alive!”

* * * * *

Back in the city, Chewbacca was first to meet them. Like a woolly missile, he barreled across the landing pad to catch them both in one of those bone-crunching hugs. Han sputtered around a mouthful of Wookiee pelt and faced his partner’s rowdy exuberance with a grin. “Happy to see us, huh?”

Chewie rumbled something injurious about slow-brained humans and a brand new gray streak in his fur, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed them intently.

“Like it better now?” Luke asked quietly, and got his hair ruffled again for good measure.

“Like what better?” But when Han broke the cheerful stranglehold, he caught a glimpse of white-robed councilors plodding up from the Magistrate building. Like the hordes of doom, out to demand their dues. Leia walked ahead at a terse pace.

“Tell me later,” Han muttered. While Chewie still screened them from view, there were more important matters to take care of. He grabbed Luke into a tight hug, a quick breath crushed between them when Luke’s arms went around him with equal force.

“It will be okay,” Luke murmured, the pressure in his grip adding promise to the reassurance. “Don’t worry. Nothing can go wrong now.”

Reluctantly, Han let go. The whole sordid weight of the situation settled in again, dragging at the pit of his stomach. “Doesn’t mean I gotta like it.”

Then the solemn company was on top of them, and Leia clasped her brother in a desperate embrace, like none Han recalled, not even from their last night on Endor. Puzzled relief crept into her eyes as she looked him over and made way for a tremulous smile.

“We shall commence in another half hour,” Councilor Wyck’cha said with a bow in their direction. Ready to start that grisly machine rolling again, at the grinding pace of tradition.

Though Han returned the smile Luke flung over his shoulder, his stomach still tightened round a clot of unease when they marched him off. Leia drew closer as she watched, the tightness across her shoulders spelling anxiety in a way her face didn’t.

“Relax.” Han closed the remaining distance with a light touch of her arm. “’S gonna be different this time.”

“I’ve done what I could, but...” A quick shake of the head canceled the _but_ , and Leia raised her chin against that shadow of alarm. “I had a long talk with the Chancellor and her council. They hadn’t anticipated this development, and they’ve used what leverage they have over the acclaimers to ensure that they react... reasonably. It’s clear to all of them that Luke isn’t anything like Vader.”

There was that _but_ again, entrenched in her inflection, in the strange, furtive look she gave him.

“Yeah? Then what’s wrong?”

Leia bit her lip. “I failed Luke.” It came out with explosive force, her tone suddenly stripped of all constraint. “I wanted him to keep the secret at all costs and failed to see the danger because... I couldn’t face the fact that it might happen to me. Because I didn’t want to think of myself as Vader’s daughter.”

“That’s just... human,” Han offered, flustered because he’d never seen her like this.

“Princesses aren’t raised to be human.” Her sarcasm came with a brittle edge. “But you already know that.”

“You ain’t all Princess though. Never have been.” Han gave it his best shot, but comfort was nowhere within easy reach.

“I’m not so sure.” Whatever else she might’ve said got choked back when Leia averted her eyes. In silence, they walked down to the courtyard, Chewie hanging back a couple of steps.

In the short shadows of trees lining the sandstone wall, Leia cut her brisk pace and turned to face Han. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said with a nervous gesture. “But, Luke... he’s so – I’ve never seen him like this. How did you...”

Her expression seized in fragile composure, and a thousand thoughts lined up behind it.

“Go on,” Han said in a lowered voice. “Ask.”

“You love him, don’t you?” It came out fast and breathless, a suspicion that must’ve simmered for some time. “I should’ve asked _you_ that, on Endor.” She read a startled question off his lips and held up a hand. “You’re lovers. When did this start?”

Han cleared his throat and damned the instinct that betrayed exactly how awkward he felt. “On Coruscant, if you’re talkin’ about actually doing something about it, but...” He prodded the truth out with a helpless shrug. “For the rest of it... A long time ago. Before Hoth.”

“Before―”

“Yeah, I know what that makes me,” he cut her off. “Couldn’t face how I felt and tried my goddamn best to ignore it.”

Her glance lowered, instant reaction shuttered from sight. “I never had a chance, did I?”

“Leia―”

“No. I’m... mostly angry at myself.” Arms wrapped around herself, Leia took to pacing. “I could have realized, but I saw just what I wanted to see. I didn’t really see _you_ either. Not until yesterday...” Her tone softened. “When you would have done anything to set Luke free.”

“I couldn’t’ve managed without your help,” Han inserted.

She waved that aside and watched him with something close to curiosity. “So the answer is yes. I’ve been so blind.”

Oddly quiet now, she frowned, but not at him, more like the way she might inspect her own reflection.

“Doesn’t mean I never...” He faltered for words that didn’t clog everything with dusty platitudes.

“I know. There was just something... stronger, right?” She turned sideways, one arm still pressed to her middle. “You joined the Rebellion because of Luke, and that’s where your real commitment lay. I can see that now.” Reasoning it out with herself, Leia resorted to ingrained habits that’d carried her through countless losses and upheavals. Raised a princess, a future leader of state, she could wrap herself in self-sufficience like a second skin, but Han had never been so sharply aware of it before. The loneliness that went with it.

“Luke loves you,” he said without thinking. “’N I do, too.” But regret thickened his voice again, no help for that. “Look, he never would’ve done anything to hurt you, it was just me, taking way too long to make sense of it all.”

“Yes, it hurts, but...” Leia straightened and finally met his eyes again, “mostly because you didn’t tell me sooner. Because it’s difficult to accept that things weren’t what they seemed.” She paused to issue a narrow smile. “Why is it that we always end up talking about these things when there’s no time? We should try to break that habit, don’t you think?”

“Shouldn’t be so hard,” was all Han could offer. Regrets, amends, a real effort at salvaging friendship from so many false starts would all have to wait ‘til later. Banked tension mounted again when Leia glanced across at the magistrate building.

“Before we go,” she started, her tone shifting back towards sobriety. “I talked to Mon Mothma last night. Of course she was dismayed that the truth transpired in this fashion, but I think she wasn’t comfortable with the prospect of having to keep that secret either.”

Calculations raced through Han’s mind, anger reviving in their wake. “So maybe she dropped a hint to someone―”

“Don’t be paranoid, Han, absolutely not,” Leia stopped him. “Mothma would never do such a thing, and we should be grateful for her support. She’s preparing a public statement, and once we’re back on Coruscant, we can make more concrete plans.”

“Not sure I wanna know what that means,” Han grumbled.

Leia gave him a look full of fond exasperation. “Well, we need to take control of this situation and make it clear that Luke is one of us.” She sighed. “Ironical as it is, his readiness to face the Worren’s court of honor should go a long way towards demonstrating that he has nothing to hide.”

“When that miserable affair’s finally over.” Han directed a glare at the government complex. “Luke doesn’t deserve this shit.”

“No argument from me.” A flash of temper showed as Leia combed stray hair back from her face. “But I suppose we’d better go and get ready to blast Luke out if something goes wrong again.”

He had to tell her now. “I ain’t coming.” Under her puzzled gaze, Han added, “’S how Luke wants it. I promised I’d stay away this time.”

Leia shook her head. “You’re that sure―?”

And recollection swamped him with ambivalent force. No way to be sure, not the way Luke was.

“There are some things I need to do by myself.” Luke’s voice had been calm with regained purpose, a smile rising against Han’s instant objections. “You’ll have to trust me, too.”

A sonorous rumble dragged Han back to the present. “Yeah, you go ahead, Chewie,” he held his ground under the troubled scrutiny from his Wookiee partner. “I’ll just... hang out here.”

Leia slanted him another quizzical glance, but he waved them both off to measure up to his claim.

Easier said than done. Han cast about for something to moor his attention. Functionaries ambled back and forth between buildings, the whole scene entirely too peaceful and too damn ordinary not to feel like a sham. What was he supposed to do, park himself in a corner like lost property? Han crossed the courtyard in long strides, reaching for the memory of Luke’s request for a steady focus.

“I don’t want you to watch and hurt for me,” he’d said, the glider’s engine already running. “I want to think of you out there in the sunlight. Of the freedom you’ve made me see.”

“Just thought it’d be some kinda comfort,” he’d countered, pulling the most personal argument from a seesaw of reactions.

“But I’ll be able to feel your presence anyway.” And Luke made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

Trouble was, that connection went only one way. Han hunched up his shoulders as he shambled along. Out here, he’d be reduced to high-wired waiting and wondering, and he’d never handled that very well.

He turned another corner and put the brakes on just in time to avoid taking a header down the stairs that divided the sheer rockface. Down in the winding gorge, the pale memory steles showed like patient ghosts. Han breathed the thin, dry air and descended slowly.

Wasn’t so hard to understand Luke’s need to handle some things on his own and test an untried equilibrium. Battered and shook up from the carbon freeze, Han had flung himself in every direction to reclaim his own life. But the charged symmetry between them was something else, newly shaped and not yet settled into solid form. _‘N maybe it never will_. Han quirked a tight grin at himself ― _like you’re all for steady ‘n settled?_ ― and unfastened his shirt to the frying heat.

The Worren who’d been their guide days ago shuffled up to unlock the gate for him in decorous silence. With a nod for her, Han stepped past, into the garden of recollection.

How long would it take this time, and at what price―? Uneasy memory uncoiled again at once. Luke had tried to make it sound like a clear, almost welcome necessity, but it’d still tightened those fine lines round his eyes and hardened his mouth. The pull of memory at war with his resolute calm. And that wouldn’t stop anytime soon, Han suspected. Just this morning, before dawn, he’d found Luke awake beside him, stretched out on his back and staring up at the wind-swept sky.

“Still wondering where I am,” he’d answered Han’s sleep-slurred question, and turned into his touch with a shiver that added what he couldn’t say.

Han had responded to that the only way he knew, with all of himself. Burning it down to something raw and simple that enclosed them in the same skin, the same desire. _Here, with me_. Though of course that wasn’t enough of an answer, couldn’t be, not after everything Luke had been through. Wouldn’t have been enough for him either, if it had been his own life, taken apart to be reassembled from scratch.

Watery shadows brushed Han’s shoulders as he walked among the stones, alternating with the scalding sting of noon. He pulled the last night to him like a shield, the sight of Luke this morning when he’d turned naked into the shoreless wind, brimming over with excitement and a wild joy of living. Nothing could stop him now, or quench that deep-rooted power. And now that he had full access to the Force again, living up to the demands of rebuilding the Jedi order would have to come easier too. Most likely, he’d want to throw himself into it sometime soon.

For the first time, Han wondered if he could be a match for all that intensity, for the steeled will that drove Luke. And there were too many things Luke didn’t know about him — hell, there’d been times in his life forcing him to bend to sordid circumstance, things he wasn’t proud of but in all honesty couldn’t regret either —

 _How can you want me like that?_ Luke’s question came back to him. Raising troubled echoes that tightened Han’s chest. All the things he’d felt last night. _I need you, kid, with me, always_. Too much to ask. Out of control.

When he looked up, he’d reached the back part of the garden, the scatter of ancient boulders that hadn’t been scrawled over with names and memories. After a quick glance at the chrono, he wandered down paths cutting through patterned gravel, restless apprehensions stalking him again. They’d be at it now, and it still set his teeth on edge. Damn the Worren for wanting to pry Luke’s mind open and dig out something still bleeding.

Han swiped gathering sweat off his forehead. For the time being, he could only stick it out. His glance raked along the tangents and spirals drawn meticulously into the grit and set off by different shades of gravel. Not just a random ornament maybe. At a closer look, those intersecting concentric circles grew vaguely familiar. Maybe the whole layout represented a star chart of some kind, the stones doubling for suns and planets.

Han cocked his head, following a radial that bisected wide curves and aligned three boulders on an orbital plane. Nightsky drawn down to earth with that unslaked hunger for the far depth of space. Much like the maps he’d kept sketching as a kid, when it was all he could do to make a scrap of sky his own.

 _And who’re you now?_ The question bounced back like a ricochet from weeks ago. Nothing he could ever answer with a clear concept, but less troublesome here. Much had shifted back to the center, essentials from the past merging through the clutter of change. A slow fusion that’d turn out something sound eventually. At least he hoped so.

Han rounded the largest boulder that marked the center of the whole array when sudden alarm gripped him. In the brilliant sunlight, chills unfolded and spread on his skin, and he tensed to a sensation much more definite than mere misgivings. Something was happening, he could feel it like a sudden tilt of magnetic fields, except that it was more personal and focused to the core of him, like memories of Luke breaking open to release their essence.

 _‘M with you, kid, all the way_.

Breathless stillness sank into him, a strange blank of anticipation that charged him and crested ― unlocking a wild shout in the middle of his mind, full of raw, triumphant energy ―

 _I’m alive_ ―

― and it tore through him, far more real and potent than memory.

Fast on its heels, a subliminal ripple passed through the ground and surged right up into his bone marrow. Electricity pouring from the inside out, gone again in a leap of heartbeat, and he blinked against the moment’s disorientation. Needed another second to pinpoint something odd about his surroundings, something altered as if he’d failed to notice the obvious before. All the outlines were the same, the stones hadn’t been rocked from their gravel beds, but ―

They were glowing.

A web of glistening veins overran all the boulders, surreptitious glitters in the wash of daylight. Han reached a shaky hand to the nearest surface, like he could connect with the subtle flow and get in touch with Luke that way. Crazy. But he could feel something, tingles threading across the rough stone and into his palm, smooth and vibrant and strangely compelling. He let his eyes slip closed while a faint heat tracked clandestine pathways through his nerves.

 _The stones used to light up in times of great need_ , he recalled, alarm snaking back into his mind, but there it stumbled into a wall of sheer brightness. _They don’t know_ ― and maybe he didn’t either, but here he could touch something unquestionably alive and real, like an extension of Luke’s presence reaching back for him ― overtaken by a sudden jolt that spelled itself out clearly.

 _It’s over_. Han jerked away from the stone, its bizarre magnetism, and took the shortest route back to the gate, marching briskly at first, then jogging, all that galvanized anticipation pushing him along. Throughout the garden, the firestones still shimmered faintly. When he reached the gate at a run, the Worren guard had disappeared, but from the corner of his eye, Han caught supple movement, a shadow descending the stairs.

“Han!” Luke took the final steps in a single leap and swung into his arms, spinning them both through an exhilarated half-circle.

“What happened?” His hands got busy running all over Luke’s frame, to gather up a damage report, if needs be. “You all right?”

“More. I’m free.”

And he looked it too, a vibrancy about him that eclipsed paltry facts and details, scrambling Han’s questions.

“’S all I need to know,” he muttered, “Luke, you should’ve seen―” A winded chuckle cut him short, and he had to start over. “I think you ‘n the Force just worked a freakin’ miracle, ‘xcept that nobody was around to notice. All the stones lit up like torches.”

“The firestones.” Luke slipped a curious glance past the wide open gate.

“Yeah, that was you.” Han captured Luke’s hand against his chest and watched as curiosity shaded over into clear recognition.

“Some places seem to focus the Force... I think this is one of them.” Luke cocked his head, arms drawing tight about Han’s waist. “But now... it’s over for good. They let me go.”

Han breathed out, a derisive snort riding on boundless relief. “Yeah, let’s hope we can wrap up the negotiations fast ‘n get outta here.”

“What d’you have in mind?” A searching glance swept his face, full of restless expectancy.

“Nothing in particular, only—” The notion took shape again, more insistent than before. Han hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “You oughta take another look at those old stones, at the very back. Couldn’t figure it out by myself, but I think they were set up to work as a star chart, or something like that. Might be a good place to start, if this whole garden is what you say.”

Luke nodded, and the spark in his eyes held something more than anticipation.

“Though Leia wants you back on Coruscant sometime soon,” Han added. “For some kind of formal announcement and — to figure out what your future position with the Alliance is gonna be, I guess.”

“What about you?” Luke asked bluntly. “After this assignment...”

“Don’t think I wanna do the military thing much longer.” Han trailed that admission with a brief shrug. More than anything, he’d carried on with the General Solo act to secure Luke’s position. “’Least, not like this. I’m too used to working on my own.”

Luke gave him a look that homed for trouble and covert meanings. “Well, I hope you can still get used to a permanent presence in your life,” he said at length.

“Sure about that?” It’d come out without thought, a loaded question blurted from the tension of weeks, grown volatile over the past hours. With a grimace, Han tracked it down to the buried root. “Y’know, maybe... this is it. You’re starting over. You needed me to get you to this point, and now―”

“You think _that’s_ why I didn’t want you to witness the last of it?” Luke broke in. “Because I’m getting ready to leave you?”

“Not exactly. But you’re gonna do your Jedi thing, and I’m not―”

“Han!” The sharp, incredulous note halted his argument, and the rest of it came apart under the heat of Luke’s mouth. Stormy demands breathed into him, consuming doubt into conviction. “You’ve been my... anchor―” scattered between the brush of lips and breath, “no, more like a beacon, everything that’s calling me, that I want to reach for...” Luke’s fingers threaded into his hair and held him steady. “Life.”

And it was pouring from him, incredible, so much feeling and heedless confidence.

“’N I could hear you,” Han murmured, a cramped ache in his chest lifted out when his hands framed Luke’s face. “Can’t explain it, but I could... inside my mind.”

“I know.” Luke’s smile broke like change itself, awash in dazzling certainty. “We’re still at the beginning of... everything.”

“Kid...” Han swallowed. One word that ransomed the past and let it shine like a closed circle.

With a firm grip, Luke reeled him close again. “I love you.” Breathing the words into Han’s mouth, so they’d be kept safe.

“More’n you know,” Han answered back when Luke let him up for air, relief and desire snapping sparks through his stomach. And maybe he was holding on too hard, but he was still in the process of grounding himself.

“Let’s take a look at those stones first,” Luke suggested, though he made no move to turn aside. “Maybe they’ll guide us someplace worth exploring. And maybe we can take a break away... from everything. For a time. Don’t you think we deserve that?”

“Sounds good,” Han murmured. Though _perfect_ was more like it. Unbelievable.

“So that’s settled. And I’ll get another chance to show you...”

Luke’s voice lowered, the sound gliding liquid through Han’s senses, a slow, unstoppable convergence that uncoiled time into a single flare of chance. _Everything_. He could taste it in the melting pressure of Luke’s mouth under his own, watch it expand behind closed lids. Electric blue, flaming into radiant white.

The future, wide as the sky.

* * * * *

_Far as you want to take me_   
_Far as your eyes can see_   
_Leave the world alone in the sky_   
_You and I go free._

* * * * *

{Quotes from: _Deep As You Go_ by October Project}

**Author's Note:**

> First published in ELUSIVE LOVER 5, 2001.


End file.
